Gravity Well Part One
by HiThereEveryOne
Summary: A powerful new mutant causes upheval in a small town. Chapter 12 closes down a long night for May Armstrong and the New X-men of Academy X. The world reacts to the slaughter in New York as forces set up on all sides - TBC in part 2
1. It's Morning in America

Gravity Well part 1 - It's Morning in America.  
  
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Authors note: 9/18/2004  
  
This is the last edit I will do to this story, I swear. I fixed some glaring problems with it and put it all in past tense. Timothy Perando was an incredible help in doing edits to chapters 1 through 7 which I will be incorporating shortly.  
  
Many have noted that chapters one and two are not the strongest chapters of this story. You can almost start on chapters 3, 5 or 6 and not feel like you've missed much. These are my first chapters of my writing career and I'd ask for your patience with the initial clunkiness. The story smoothes out and gets much more substantial in the later chapters. Please do yourself a favor and check them out!  
  
Patrick Lewis. (AKA Hithereeveryone)  
  
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The moon lit the night as two thirty came and went in suburban Springfield MO. Outside was cold and breezy but she does not care. She has needs. Needs that at this point can be satisfied in only one place, in only one way.  
  
As she stole through the backyards of the neighborhood, she was careful to stay in the shadow of the trees to avoid whatever prying eyes the night concealed. She is alone and cold. Her need is strong.  
  
Finding her way by the moon's light, the diminutive creature scurried to the back window of a modest home. She knows that here her needs will be met. With a well practiced flick she opened the window's lock and slowly, silently raised the sash.  
  
She felt the warmth on her face. It drew her in. Like a squirrel, she noiselessly hoped up onto the windowsill. Once she checked that the coast was clear she stepped silently onto the carpet and closed the window behind her. Looking at the lumps in the bed, she saw her final reward, the thing that will feed her need. Creeping silently up to the bed, the intruder slowly pulled back the covers.  
  
"You know the bear and I have been talking here," boomed a voice out of the darkness at the corner of the room as all of the lights sprung to blinding and revealing life.  
  
"WWAAaaHHHHTTTTTT!!!!!" screamed the tiny intruder, revealed be a very small sixteen year old girl, her eyes bolted wide open with surprise.  
  
The voice continued from its corner filled with a pile of stuffed animals. "... And we haven't yet decided how best to punish you since grounding you obviously doesn't work." He stood up to his full six foot height, and walked across the room toward the shivering teenager. Her dirty blonde hair covered her face. She still needed her sleep and her bed, but now adrenaline was running through her veins. "Sweetheart, do you have any idea how worried I was about you? Where the hell were you anyway?" His concerned tone dovetailed into frustration.  
  
"I was,... I was out." She said, taking off her coat and shoes without meeting her father's eyes.  
  
"OUT?! You have got to be kidding me! Who is out at 2:30 in the morning?" He came over and sat on the bed with her. Lifting her chin up with his finger he said softly, "Will you at least look at me when I'm talking to you? Can you give me that?" She reluctantly met his eyes. "Now where were you and why did you sneak out of the house. Worry me sick."  
  
"I snuck out because YOU grounded me." The young girl gave in to confused anger and started to cry.  
  
He took his hand away from her chin and said, "I grounded you because your grades suck."  
  
"Just the english and social studies! I did great in math and physics", she shot back getting up from the bed.  
  
He looked across at her. Standing all of four feet tall she was only slightly taller that he was sitting down. "You forgot gym." His tone softened. "Listen, honey,... we're a year away from looking into colleges. Coach Green seriously thinks you could get a real offer from a good school for a scholarship with your gymnastics and all, but not if you flunk your classes, any of them. I thought, maybe making you stay home instead of jerking around with Jannie and your buddies you'd, I don't know, pick up a book or something. Besides you still haven't told me where you were."  
  
She shot a fiery look through her blonde locks. "I was out."  
  
"Looks like were not getting anywhere tonight. I'll talk to you in the morning. You might want to take a shower, you smell like smoke." He kissed her on the head. "I love you but you are still way way grounded, Lucinda May. Get some sleep." He walked through the door and shut it behind him. Suddenly, with a TWANGONG! sound, a history book hit the door with a loud thump. "Break that door and pay for it. Actions have consequences," he yelled through the door.  
  
From the other side of the room May looked at the book in disbelief. She hadn't touched it. Did she have ghosts in her room? She poked at the book with her toe. It didn't bite. She quickly put it back and jumped into bed. Now warm and comfortable she found herself falling into sleep, her needs met for now.  
  
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Dawn broke on David Alleyne as he prepared to start the day. In his time here at the Xavier Institute he noticed that the fitter of the staff tended to have better nutritional skills and also worked out in the morning. This knowledge came to the tall black teen because David, like the rest of his classmates here at the affectionately nicknamed "Mutant High," was a mutant. While eyebeams and lightning bolts were what normal people thought of when they thought of mutants, David's talent for obtaining and incorporating the skills and knowledge of people around him was much less threatening.  
  
Of course, David knew that skills and knowledge are sometimes no replacement for a good right hook, so he tied is shoes and set off for the gym to hit the treadmill and lift some weights. Before he closed the door he looked at his sleeping and disheveled roommate. While David was seventeen, and would be an upper classman, his little brother punk of a roommate was a sophomore with stinky feet. 'Waking the kid up is pointless,' He thought. 'I wonder if his power to heal can also help him build muscle? Then again, maybe it keeps him from getting the benefit of a work out. Whatever, I don't think I'll ever catch him in the gym. Not enough discipline. I wonder some times if he cares at all.'  
  
The gym was bright and well equipped with mirrors on the walls and rubber matting on the floors. Though it was early he found that Cessily Kincaid and Sofia Mantgenta had already gotten there and were down to business on the free weights. He had gotten on well with Sofia since first arriving at the school a few months ago and they were good friends. While he didn't know Cessily as well as Sofia, he was beginning to warm up to her and her quip sense of humor.  
  
In another part of the gym, Katie Pulaski was doing tumbling routines. Everyone knew Katie as "Katie the Cat Girl" because of her mutation. Her fur made her resemble someone who was half tabby and she had a playful and perky nature to match.  
  
"Hey Sofia! Nice to see you this early. I was beginning to wonder if anyone was going to take me up on the morning weight training I had planned"  
  
"Well, keep wondering. She's helping me out." Cessily jumped in. "It just about took a bomb to wake her up too. You guys need to lay off that afternoon coffee."  
  
"Actually," Sofia yawned, "It was a little of both. That and the general encouragement of Wolverine to improve my strength." She put on her best Wolverine voice. "You can't always rely on your mutant powers. Sometimes a body's just gota have fortitude and strength to survive." She smiled and continued, "You know? He called me 'slight?'"  
  
Cessily's red hair bobbed above her shiny metallic face as she giggled at Sofia's impersonation. "Yea, well, you are slight. And I don't see you becoming She-Hulk ether."  
  
The sixteen year old Venezuelan girl struck a clenched body builder pose and grunted out "Grrrr!!"  
  
"Nice face." David teased. "So why are you 'beefing up' Cessily?"  
  
She leaned back into the bench press as Sofia finished adjusting the weights on the barbell. The redheaded metallic girl pushed up on the barbell with Sofia standing spotter. "Well,.. Apparently, my equivalent strength is related to my control of my shape shifting powers." She struggled to keep her form as she moved the bar down and then up as she talked. "In truth, I have no 'beef' to work with, lucky me, so the idea is that I train with weights to give me the 'force of will' to retain my natural shape even against great strain. Xa'in's idea," She added, referring to her faculty advisor.  
  
"So how's it going?" David asked. Suddenly the barbell slipped languidly through the mercury-metallic hands of the young mutant, went right down through her forearms and smooched all the way through her chest. A ripple went through her liquidy body from the shock.  
  
"Not too great I'm afraid." She replied to David as nonchalantly as possible with a barbell sticking out of her upper chest. "Nice spot, by the way." She kidded to Sofia who was trying to get the weights off of, or rather, out of her friend.  
  
Katie and David came over to help out and lifted on ether side of the weight until they got the barbell off of Cessily enough for her to slide out from under it. This pulled her leotard awkwardly out of place but David wisely pretended not to notice.  
  
"Maybe you should use the machines, or dumbbells," the young black mutant suggested.  
  
"Thanks, David, Sofia, but I guess the gym wasn't that good an idea. Dr. McCoy said he had a hydraulic press I could use to work out in. I'll see you guys at breakfast, kay?"  
  
"Sure thing," Sofia beamed as Cessly walked out the gym door.  
  
Katie looked at the door. "Wow, I thought she was going to loose her clothes again. You know that's what happened when her powers first kicked in? She melted into a pool of mercury in homeroom and when she pieced herself back together she was naked! Makes waking up with a coat of fur sound like a walk in the park." She started to tumble away and added glibly, "or at the very least, a little less breezy."  
  
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Xavier sat at his desk examined his email. Cerebro had detected two new mutant signatures last night and he poured over the reports. A sense of satisfaction passed over him. This was when he felt most at peace, answering his calling. He thought of them, somewhere out in the Midwest. Two new mutants had been born into this unforgiving world. 'Hopefully they will find their place and not give in to the temptations that their powers will lay across their path.' Professor Xavier felt like a father concerned about his children.  
  
He was awakened from his thoughts by a knock on the door. "Ah. Mr. Xorn, please come in."  
  
Tall, wrapped in metal chains and enclosed in an iron mask Xorn was an imposing figure. This was in contrast to his soft gait and his gentle handling of a fine china cup. "I thought you could use some coffee, Sir. How are you doing today?"  
  
Xavier took the cup and saucer from Xorn as he sat down. "You mean how are the legs feeling? They are fine, Mr. Xorn. Thank you for your concern. How are your students doing?"  
  
"The special class is taking to my tutoring exceptionally well. I find that they are quite willing to learn given the proper,... inspiration."  
  
There was something in this explanation that perked Xavier's ears, but he let it go. Since coming to the Xmen, Xorn had shown himself to be trustworthy and Xavier had the utmost confidence in his friend. "Well your brand of inspiration my find additional use in the future here Mr. Xorn. It seems that we have located two new mutants last night in the mid-west region. I believe that we are under represented in 'America's heartland' and this is a prime opportunity to change that. Diversity is critical to a well rounded education, especially among mutants."  
  
"I agree completely, Sir. If I may, how are you intending to contact these new potential charges? Are you dispatching Ms. Moonstar again? She has shown herself to be quite resourceful."  
  
"Yes, I find that the younger kids respond to Dani very favorably indeed. And since all the other aircraft are taken at the moment, I'm thinking of giving Dani that flying time in the Learjet she requested. It's a shame really about her horse. I do believe that she misses flying with him."  
  
Xorn shifted in his chair. "Sir, have you considered sending Dani's charges along with her on this recruitment drive? That is a very large plane and could easily accommodate the extra passengers."  
  
Xavier kept his puzzlement about Xorn's suggestion to himself as he answered. Though he had not talked to the staff at length about these matters, he was determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past. "I hadn't considered it and I still wouldn't. Thank you for your input, Mr. Xorn, but those students are not X-men, nor do I believe that they should be traveling with as inexperienced a pilot as Dani. Even though she has my confidence, accidents do happen, wouldn't you agree?"  
  
"I would agree to the risk of flying, but not to the students isolation in this institution. You would agree that we should include people from every walk of life into the school, but you would shut the door to having the students experience these different environments for themselves. If our goal is the eventual harmony with our human brethren, shouldn't these children get to go out and experience how humans live?"  
  
"If you are cautioning me against building a mutant ghetto here, I am sensitive to that situation. However, this is a school for mutants, Mr. Xorn, and to a limited degree there will have to be some segregation from the human population. These children are fragile jewels, and are not always able to handle the pressure that accompanies their uniqueness. I'm afraid the policy here at Xavier's is that we are to nurture our charges to be at peace with themselves so that they are better able to be at peace with others. And that is to be done in a controlled environment. Is there anything else, Mr. Xorn?" Xavier said.  
  
"No, Sir, I believe I need to get ready for my morning classes. Thank you."  
  
As Xorn left, Xavier remarked upon his unusual teaching style. There was no doubt that he was getting results out of the school's most difficult children. Still, he made a note to take a deeper look into Mr. Xorn's methods.  
  
Switching gears, the old professor went back to the question of these two new mutants. On one, he had a reasonably extensive file. This young man had physical manifestations of some sort that would dissipate over time. The power level was strong so the properties of whatever it is he could produce could be extreme, but it is clear that he would be hampered by the rapid deterioration of the substance. By the amount of data that he had on this new mutant, he must have been using his power fairly liberally since discovering it. "Hopefully the young man isn't a danger to himself" Xavier thought.  
  
Turning to the other profile he had in front of him, Xavier read these words:  
  
Mutant detected Springfield MO. Female. Power Level: Unknown Power type: Unknown  
  
Further Detail:  
  
Contact duration: .05 seconds. Power Level during burst: Astronomical Power type: Telekinetic?  
  
Continuing local scans of the area.  
  
Extreme caution! Upper Omega Level Mutant.  
  
"Oh Dear! I hope this young lady isn't a danger to others!"  
  
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Retreating to the privacy of his classroom, Xorn produced a cellular phone from his jacket. He waited until the message 'connection secure' came up on the phone before speaking.  
  
"Esme," he said in the whispering version of his booming voice, "I would like you to do something for me,..."  
  
To be continued. 


	2. A Walk in the Woods

Chapter 2 - A Walk in the Woods  
  
Dani was out for her morning jog on this crisp cool day clad in sweatpants jacket and a took. She could feel the sway of the pompom on top of the hat she borrowed from Northstar as she ran and she couldn't help feeling a little foolish. Only the Canadians think tooks are sexy, she thought as she headed around the front of the main building. Suddenly, she was face to face with Professor Xavier's astral projection, which took the shape of his 3 foot high head.  
  
"Dani, can I talk to you for a moment? I'm afraid it's rather urgent." the head said to her telepathically.   
  
Fighting off the creepy feeling that she still retained from her teen years with Xavier, she replied, "Are the kids ok?" Since becoming a mentor to the new students at the school, they have always been first in her mind. She continued jogging but now went to Xavier's office instead of her room.  
  
Xavier's avatar kept pace and said, "Yes, the children are just fine." As she stepped in the door to Xavier's office, the large astral head zoomed into his own head he continued talking. "In fact, I continue to be impressed with your ease with the youngsters, so I'd like you to go on another recruiting spree for me."  
  
New York City has all that mankind has to offer all in one place. From the highest highs of culture to the lowest lows of filth, it's all here somewhere if you know how to find it. As Esme looked around at the loft that is the brotherhood's hideout she figured someone must have looked really hard to find this slime pit. The former occupants left a large pile of trash in a corner to augment the other, smaller piles of trash that served as furniture for her and Toad.  
  
Getting down to business, Esme concentrated hard. She had remote controlled the likes of Cyclops and Sage and was getting cocky. "This should be cake," she thought to herself as she initiated her scan of the Xavier Institute in search of Dani. She found her target in the same room as Xavier and was slightly taken aback. Proximity is a different animal on the astral plane, but it still counts enough to be weary of a giant like Prof. X. She watched Dani walk out of Xavier's office and go to her room to change. Once Dani was alone, Esme struck, surreptitiously sliding into Dani's mind.  
  
A peacefully flowing creek ran through a wooded patch on a warm summer day. The sunlight made it through the leaves in patches making the underbrush shimmer. Esme sensed she had entered Dani's thoughts and memories, though was completely disoriented.   
  
"Have I failed?" she thought. "No. Dani is a highly trained mutant. Xavier must have trained her to defend her mind subconsciously. I just gotta find a way in."   
  
MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! MERP! SMACK! ... "zzzzZZZZDANG!"  
  
A dream of stars that sing and moving planetary bodies that kept harmony was cut short for May Armstrong by the blaring of a god awful alarm clock. She hated that clock and now it was waking her up with a headache she found that little extra hate inside of her to throw it's way!   
  
She sat on the side of her bed and looked around her room. Her Dulcimer and Mandolin stood propped up in their stands among the trophies and ribbons on display, each with a little plastic gymnast on their highest pedestal. Her own letterman jacket, adorned with patches was strung across the back of her desk chair. "Yea, I do all this and the wise man tells me I suck because I hate History. Blah. Who needs History or English? I'm going to be an engineer." She got up and walked to the door. Without realizing it she reached out with her mind and caused her bath towel to levitate three feet off the ground. She sleepily grabbed the floating towel and started to walk down the hall to the bathroom. "He was right about one thing thought," She thought "I do smell like smoke. Blah!"  
  
Esme examined her surroundings in more detail. As she looked deeper into the vein of a leaf near her, she found herself drawn into a scene. Suddenly she was watching a competitive and focused Sam Guthrie pitching a baseball to Roberto DaCosta. Even from this vantage point near first base she could see the overconfident stance of the tan young man at the plate. Roberto burst into his Sunspot form just as the ball whizzed within the strike zone and whiffed with a tremendous swing. The bat flew from his hands by the force of the intended blow and Rhane, Allison and Doug all laughed. Sam said "How'd you like that curve ball 'Berto?"  
  
As Sam turns to head back to the mound, Esme found herself back by the creek. What was that? She thought. A Memory?  
  
Lost in her own thoughts Esme looked up at the sun and was instantly confronted with Magma using her powers on her. Esme recoiled back to dodge the blow and landed with a bump on the creek's edge.   
  
Maybe she's on to me and that was a warning, I gota get out of here. She started to panic and looked around for something she could use.  
  
She looked into the dark water and found herself staring into the soul swallowing Demon Bear. "AAAAAAA!" That scared her, as it would anyone, but it also shocked her back into the reality of the situation.  
  
Finally getting her wits about her, Esme realized what she had here. It was an illusion, much like the illusions Dani uses to confront her opponents. All the memories and thoughts are here, but hidden behind a tranquil mask. Each small piece of color was actually a memory. Here, laid all around this telepath was the totality of who Danielle Moonstar is, was and will ever be. All Esme had to do now was find the right moment and change her memory of this mornings conversation with Xavier.  
  
Closing her mind to the contents of the mosaic of images around her, Esme adjusted her perception to get a glimpse of the age of Dani's memories. This technique would help her in her quest for today's memory without destroying the illusion, which would probably be detected by ether Xavier or Dani herself. She fancied herself as being far too skilled for that kind of mistake. By adjusting her own perception rather than the world around her, she could find what she was seeking with out altering the environment at all. When she again focused on the creek and the forest it was rendered in a false color from red to blue. Images of young Dani's childhood came in as red, while the bluest of blue were the events of this day. This was still too much information for Esme to absorb. Since the color assigned to a particular memory was a combination of the color she perceived through her eyes an felt through her emotions age and since the location of each memory was determined by it's color to create this illusion of earth and sky, the forest now moved as a nauseating and bizarre whirl of colors and shapes superimposed upon the trees and things around her.   
  
The young telepath changed the resolution of her own perceptions again. This time everything up to yesterday would be red, and today would be a prism of color. The trees, the grass and even the sky and water seemed to be on fire in this new color scheme, but it did have it's advantages. Esme spotted a multicolored shell on the bank of the creek that shone with perfection. Here lay the symbol of Dani's day to this moment. The blonde girl's astral form smiled and touched the spiral of the shell with her mind.  
  
Xavier's office was a place she'd thought she'd left behind forever, so Esme was a little startled to be back, even in someone else's memory. Dani had just walked in the door huffing and puffing, perspiration on her brow. The young blonde paused the moment to get a better look around. She noticed how in Dani's mind Xavier had a kind of unearthly glow about him, almost like Byzantine paintings of Christ. "Such undeserving worship." she thought. "For all his aspirations to be the Gandhi of mutants, he sure behaves like a thug. I always wondered about that." She went up to the brighter-than-he-should-be image of Xavier. "Why do people love you when you are self contradictory? You preach peace, but you train weapons. You would have us all be warrior poets." Esme puts her hands on her hips, puffs out her chest and mocks, "I am so strong and sure of myself that I need not bother with you if you fight me, humans. Yet let us be friends."   
  
She got right in Xavier's face and said "BULL! I didn't see the humans come to our aid when the Sha'lar tried to kill us all! When they killed Sophie!! Why should we care if we step on the ants? Maybe there are some mutants who think humans just SUCK! Thought of that?" Esme looked at him frozen there and resisted the temptation to make him say something stupid just to get a laugh. She was on official business after all and let the memory resume.   
  
As before Xavier said "In fact, I continue to be impressed with your ease with the youngsters, so I'd like you to go on another recruiting spree for me."  
  
Dani walked off her jog around the Professor's office and huffed, "Well, I do have history lessons to plan and teach. The kids have a quiz today. Do you have a sub for me?"  
  
"Well, it's only for a couple days, I was thinking that Bobby could do it if you gave him your quizzes and lesson plans." He smirked anticipating her reaction. She did not disappoint.  
  
Dani's hands flew into the air. "Iceman? No offense Professor, but Bobby is a goofball. I want my kids to learn something while I'm gone." She started to stretch her hamstrings, bending over at the waist, waiting for Xavier's reaction.  
  
"I'll let you fly the Lear."   
  
Dani's head whipped up from her stretch, flinging her braids behind her shoulders. "I'll leave a video, where am I going?"  
  
Esme stopped it right there and backed it up. Best to get this out of the way quickly. She had already taken too much time and her rant at Xavier didn't help. She walked things forward until Dani asked, "Do you have a sub for me?"   
  
At that point she made Xavier say "Well, it's only for a couple days, I was thinking that you and Xi'an could take your charges with you and show them how you recruit mutants." Esme liked that but it didn't make sense with the next thing Dani said so she edited further.   
  
Thinking of what she knew of Dani's past she had her say "Recruit? No offense Professor, but these kids aren't Xmen. They need to learn first at the very least."  
  
Esme let Xavier speak his next line and then had Dani finish up with "I'll get the recruitment video. Where are we going?"  
  
From there the telepath let the memory play out without paying much attention to it. Esme looked it over, back and forth and it seemed to flow decently enough, so much so that when she went out of the memory, the shell looked almost the same although the day's events had been tampered with. So enamored, was she at her handiwork, that she didn't notice someone walking out of the woods.   
  
Doug Ramsey stood and looked at Esme. She finally looked up and yelped. This must be a defense mechanism!  
  
"You don't belong here." Doug said.  
  
"I was just leav---" She was touched on the face by the Doug Ramsey avitar and it sent her back in an instant to her physical body that was experiencing searing pain. "YYYAAAAAAAA!" she cried. Then she shook her short blonde hair and looked around. It was the hideout, dim and dingy. Toad kept catching flies from a nearby pile of trash.   
  
"Ewwww"  
  
The cafeteria of the Xavier's Institute was a lively place that didn't quite fit on the surface of the planet Earth. The tables are standard issue as are the trays, forks, knives, and napkins. In fact, everything is just as you would expect in an up scale high school cafeteria except the students. They are the ones who look out of this world. Funny then, that they call not only the planet but this school as their home. For you see, Xavier's is a special place. It is a school for mutants!  
  
Melissa Moore was at her usual table with 2 full trays. Given her mutant talent, Melissa redefines the term big beautiful woman. At 7 foot 6, 400 pounds or so, supermodel looks, long blonde hair in a braid down her back, and big blue eyes, she is built like a concrete Barbie doll. As Laurie Collins walked by the table of the gigantic young woman she heard a quiet sniffle cut through the happy din of the cafeteria.  
  
Laurie looked over her shoulder at the giant girl and saw that she was all alone and crying into her eggs. Having been like that lonely girl before finding her first real friend in her perky roommate Sofia, her heart went out to Melissa. Vowing to follow the optimistic example of her friend she swallowed her shyness and approached the table. "Excuse me, Melissa, right? Would you mind if I sat down?"  
  
Though she was seated and hunched over, the unhappy girl looked Laurie straight in the eye. For a moment Laurie thought that this was an incredibly bad idea but then the sobbing girl said, "Aww, why the hell not." And grabbed an apple in her right hand. As the petite blonde girl sat down, she noticed that the apple was crumbling in her fist and was soon gone in a faint patch of pink smoke.  
  
"You're in my Geometry class aren't you?" Laurie said trying to squelch her fear and take on Sofia's friendly and inviting tone.  
  
The big girl glowered at her. "Look, I know why you're here and I don't need any pity." She pushed her left hand into a plate of eggs, which similarly disappeared into pink smoke.   
  
Laurie was terrified of the now even more upset girl but tried her best to keep her power in check. The power with which she had struggled was her ability to release mood-altering pheromones that make others feel the same emotions she does. "Please, please don't scare me. I only saw that you were unhappy and alone. And, uh,... I'm sorry, I'll go."   
  
Quickly grabbing her tray and starting to get up, Laurie heard a small "Please, wait, stop, I'm sorry." from the other girl. "I'm the one who should apologize. I... I'm Melissa."  
  
"I know. I'm Laurie. Can I ask what's wrong?" Inside her feelings were changing from scared to sympathetic. Still, she struggled to keep her power in so she didn't affect the already fragile mood of the big girl.  
  
From across the table, Melissa's big hand started down on a doughnut. For the first time she noticed that the palm was rough and oddly pink. "What's wrong? My power sucks. I'm always hungry and I'll never be able to eat again!"   
  
"You seem to be doing ok, I mean, with the hands thing and all."  
  
"It keeps me alive, for all the good that does, but my stomach is gone. And while I use my power to eat with my hands, I'll never taste anything." She made and exaggerated shrug "But, thanks to my curse of a power, I'll keep getting bigger and stronger"  
  
"And you never loose the weight?"   
  
"Only after I exercise a lot, I loose some of the height and muscle, but it's so hard! I just want to eat."  
  
Laurie was letting the conversation sink in for a second when Josh Foley and Victor Borkowski came walking past the table. "Hey Laurie!" Victor said as Josh Groggily made his way to an empty table to drink his morning soda. "Sofia and the gang are going to meet up with us for breakfast. Save you a seat?"  
  
"Thanks Victor, in a second ok?" She said, then turned back to the girl seated across from her.   
  
Melissa's mouth was open. "That Josh Foley is cute! I'd sit with him too, if I were you."  
  
"Well why don't you go over and meet the gang?" She said, feeling a bit territorial with the way she was looking at Josh but keeping it to herself.  
  
She shrank back "Oh no, I couldn't do that. I'd gross him out with the hand thing and I always want to eat more when I'm nervous." Melissa stuck a finger in a glass of orange juice, turning it to a pink smoke, which absorbed back into her hand. She was quiet for a moment then she began to tear up anew. "I mean, look at me! My advisor, Mr. Drake says that you should be the person you are inside no matter what the outside looks like, whatever that means! My friends keep wanting me to get together with the huge monstrous invulnerable types like Santo, but those guys have rocks in there heads. I mean,...", She completely broke down into sobs, "Look at me! I am a monster! Who's going to love me like this? Who?"   
  
The girl completely broke down and her pink smoke completely enveloped the two trays swiftly removing from them everything edible, including the cloth napkins. Laurie didn't know what to say so she spoke as honestly as she knew how. "No one ever knows who is going to love them and it's hard to keep trying. It sucks but it's true! Because no matter how foolish and painful the search becomes, being lonely and devoid of hope is worse." The thought of her mother flashed into her mind for an instant.  
  
The big girl looked up, her face a mess. "You think?"  
  
"I know. Here, lets clean you up." She tossed the napkin at Melissa and it went up in pink smoke the second she went to grab it. "Oops!" The two girls giggled in nervous laughter as the big girl cleaned her face off by rubbing her hand over it. "Nice trick"  
  
"It's a good thing I never need a napkin." They giggled anew.  
  
Dr. Henry McCoy, The Beast, strode up to the two at the table and went right toward Melissa "I had a report from the faculty that you were here overeating again Melissa. Do I have to tell you what will happen if you persist in this destructive pattern?"  
  
"Here we go again." Melissa rolled her eyes.  
  
Beast continued without breath. "You will continue to grow bigger and stronger and taller and denser until your body can no longer take it. Come on you need to blow off some of that extra energy. I'm going to place you on a strict workout schedule until you are down to at least six three or fifteen stone, whatever comes first."  
  
"A Hundred pounds? That'll take forever!" The big girl protested.  
  
The Beast looked at her sternly then calmly said, "Then, my dear sweet Miss. Moore, I'd suggest you get started. My office, fifteen minutes if you please, I have a regimen you might like. Jubilee set up the danger room to fight an annoying pop princess named Jessica Sampson or something. Most humorous, so she tells me." He walked off still talking like the absent-minded professor in a big blue fur coat.  
  
Melissa's face went from sad to a twisted evil grin. "That does actually sound pretty funny. I wonder if she programmed it to cry. That might make me feel better."  
  
"Maybe I could get permission for that program when I'm feeling down. I'd love to make that no talent twit run in terror!"  
  
"Yea, but what do you need cheering up from, really, you have your friends waiting for you and you look normal. You can walk down the hallway with no one ever noticing you."  
  
She looked at Josh throwing an apple in the air for Victor to snag with his tongue and said, "Yea, I can get by unnoticed. Lucky me." She looked at her new friend. "I'll see you in Geometry, OK?"  
  
"OK." She said as they both got up from the table. "Hey Laurie" Melissa looked down from her towering perspective and smiled. "Thanks for not BS-ing me."  
  
"Any time."  
  
Victor snagged a grape out of the air with his long sticky tongue as Josh watched. "Dude, that's totally sick!" He busted out with a mixture of amusement and revulsion. "Ok! So can you do it with something even smaller?"  
  
"I don't know, the grape was kinda hard, not a lot to stick to and it wants to jump away from me."  
  
"Hi guys!" Laurie said, as Josh looked for something smaller than a grape on his breakfast plate. "Did you loose something?"  
  
Josh looked up and gave Laurie a smile, "Nah, we're just testing Victor's mutant powers!"  
  
"He's watching me eat like a sideshow freak and giggling about it. Laurie, I think your boyfriend here has a thing for tongues!"   
  
Laurie blushed a deep red as Josh immediately blurted out "She's not my girlfriend! Grow up Vic!"  
  
"This from the man who thinks it's amusing to throw food in other people's mouths. Check this out, you want to see funny? Watch this." The green plated, spiky headed Victor carefully eyed the next table over, behind Josh. Laurie had just sat down next to Victor so she could see what he had planned. Katie the Cat Girl was sitting with her back to them and she had just put down her milk. Victor struck with lightning speed. His tongue lashed out and stuck to the carton of milk.   
  
As it began to recoil Katie pounced and grabbed the tongue in one clawed fist and the carton of milk in the other. Her momentum made her back legs swing around so she was sitting on the edge of the table and facing victor and his intruding prehensile appendage. "Hey cutie! Don't you know how much Kitties like their milk?", she said drawing stares from all over the room. "Next time, you will have to be a little quicker with your tongue!" She pulled back and let the tongue go like a big rubber band. It recoiled back into his mouth with an audible snap making his head go back. The cafeteria busted out laughing in unison including His two friends sitting at the table.  
  
"Now that's funny!" Josh snorted while Laurie was incapacitated with laughter.   
  
Victor, still dumbstruck, looked at Katie, who was now cart wheeling out of the dining room. "Did she just call me Cutie?" He said dumbly, making Laurie and Josh laugh even harder.   
  
When Laurie could finally focus again, her advisor Dani Moonstar was hurriedly approaching them from across the room. "Laurie, Josh, I'm glad to find you here! You too Victor. Do you know where David and Sofia are?"  
  
"Well, they usually meet us here for breakfast. Apparently they went to the gym this morning."  
  
"Good. I've got something special for you guys. The professor wanted you all to come on my next recruiting sweep with me. We start in a half an hour at the hangar bay. Victor, you and Cessily are coming too, with Xi'an. This is hands on experience for you all and I know that you are ready for the challenge." She looked at them and smiled. "I'm going to go find the other and tell them the good news. Have a weekend bag packed and meet me in the Lear Jet by 8:00. Got it guys?" She whirled around and left to find the others as soon as she got an affirmative nod from the group who now looked at her walking away in confused silence.  
  
May Armstrong made her groggy way to school after an all too short night. It was only a mile's walk but to her it was endless misery. Making the walk all the more miserable was what was waiting for her at school - first period English. She used to like English but now it was a chore. She didn't have a feel for it like she did math and physics and all that reading was starting to give her headaches. As she walked, she reached into her backpack and pulled out some Motrin and gunned it down without water.  
  
"Poppin pills? I thought you were Miss Goodie Two Shoes!" A friend greeted May as she walked. The other girl dwarfed May by more than a foot and a half though she was hardly tall. "Did you sleep well?" the new girl asked, flipping back long black locks.  
  
May grimaced "Yea, slept like a baby after talking to dear old dad about what it means to be BUST-ED!"   
  
"Ouch"  
  
"Got that right." She looked up from under bangs and assessed her friend "And to what do we have to give thanks for your chipper demeanor, Ms Jannie?"  
  
Jannie did her best to stifle a smile "Oh you know, clean living, Ms May. And the fact that I got Ben Kalonowski's phone number last night!!!" She jumped up and down excited.  
  
"You did? Man, I guess I left early!"  
  
"Come on, Lets blow off Ms. Q's and I'll tell you all about it. I could use a coffee" Jannie pulled her by the hands. After briefly thinking about her father, She allowed herself to be swept away by her friend's excitement.  
  
Dani was now flying the X-corp Lear jet that was parked at Xavier's for official business. Since she had gotten a commercial Pilots license she had been bugging Warren and Xavier to let her fly some of the bigger planes to no avail. She thought to herself, "With the kids sitting in the back of the plane and Xi'an sitting in the co-pilots seat looking over the profiles of these two mutants, I felt less like a pilot and more like the father of some weird family out on a road-trip vacation. First stop - Cleveland to check up on a 13 year old boy who has apparently been quite interested in his newfound powers. After that, there is a hunt for some 'Mystery girl' in Missouri, which may be challenging. I don't know if I like bringing the kids along with me but Xavier was pretty specific. Sofia, David, Josh and Laurie should be ok, but Cessily and Victor have such obvious mutations! I hope their image inducers work ok for them."  
  
"This kid certainly has been cranking out the power since he was detected." Xi'an said over the intercom. "Cerebro thinks he's some sort of structure builder. Apparently his structures are so smooth that they have very little friction. Wonder what he's making. Slippy slides?"  
  
Dani smiled "I remember 13. Even for me it was a time of relative innocence and all that. I bet he's only figured out how to make stuff and is doing art or something. Who knows? These kids at that age think up so many silly things. I'm kinda looking forward to meeting an innocent kid and showing him the ropes, you know? Guess I should concentrate, were almost there. Tell the kids to buckle up. I wonder what he's doing now?"  
  
At that very moment in Cleveland - 200 miles away and closing - three 13 year old boys, all white, sit around a hastily drawn map of the inside of a convenient store. The one at the head of the table flexes some invisible muscle and coats himself with obscuring gray thorns that give the illusion that he is six foot 4, big and black. The deception is excellent and the other kids say "whoa!!" When he speaks His voice is distorted and deeper.  
  
"Ok, you two come in and when I rush in you push the cashier and the deli guy back into the freezer. I'll get the cash from the register and we'll meet by the door. you two then hang on to me and I'll zip us out of there with the cash. Any questions?"   
  
To be continued. 


	3. Beware of Black Ice

Gravity Well 3 - Beware of Black Ice.  
  
In Suburban Cleveland Ohio, a scene plays out as it does in many other towns. Three young teens, skipping class and walking down the street talking to one another. What is not usual is the topic of their discussion.  
  
"Hey Tim, I really don't think this is a good idea." Says a boy in a black overcoat.  
  
Timmy Jenkins, a slight boy, clearly a few years younger than his companions looks at his friend and replies, "You didn't think it was a bad idea last night or this morning. Getting cold feet?" The third teen, clearly the oldest snorts a laugh. "Listen John, if you don't want to do this, just say so. Remember, this is the seed money for weed. We get the money, we buy the quarter pound, we sell it and we continue on with some cash in our pockets and enough money to do it again. We'll be the coolest kids in school!"  
  
The boy in black was clearly flustered now and stopped walking. "Yea, but this is, like, real crime here. Selling weed is just, well, it's like you gota worry about your mom and stuff more than the law with that, but this is serious crime here, Tim!"  
  
Rick, the third boy, grabbed John by the jacket. "Would you keep your voice down?" he said in a hush, then looked around. "Look I know that this is serious, I'm nervous too. Damn man. If you keep shouting about it, there is no way we'll get away with it. Tim, you sure this is a good idea man?"  
  
"Yea sure, I'm still cool." He said, acting tough. "This is going to work fine. No one will get hurt. You guys distract the people in the store by doing a snatch and grab, I'll run in, slipping them up so you get away, grab the cash then blow out before anyone can stop me.   
  
John stammered, "This is the third revision of the plan this morning. Is this what mutants do? They figure out how to steal things from people?"  
  
Shocked, Tim thought about his friend's words. Oddly, thinking of himself as a criminal made him feel kind of cool. But this is the first time someone had referred to him as a mutant. Mutant. Even the word felt funny. He'd been hanging out with Rick and John for a year ever since he realized that they always had pot and they had never chafed at him giving them money stolen from his mom's purse for it. Problem is that his mom had found out. He was afraid that his friends would think that he's uncool if he couldn't smoke with them anymore.   
  
Rick turned back to John. "You in man? It's easy money and Timmy here is our ace in the hole. All we gota do is help him and he goes in and takes the cash."  
  
Looking at Tim, John got greedy and said, "Ok, I'm in. But we better not get caught."  
  
"Fine" Tim said and they all continued walking. "You shouldn't worry so much. The Gummy Factory is always deserted this time of day. And you got the Black Ice working for you. Our involvement in this will be un traceable."  
  
To emphasize his point, Tim iced up his hand and threw his gray ice on a nearby retaining wall. It set with an electric like crackle.  
  
Not far away, a group of strange youngsters have rented hotel rooms for the night at a traveler's motel.  
  
Room 102 - Dani and Cessily's room:  
  
"Man, I'm glad to be able to turn off this image inducer. I feel like I'm in a fishbowl or a suit of armor or something."   
  
"Is it uncomfortable? I never heard anyone else having a problem with it." Dani Moonstar looked at the red haired girl as she unpacked her bag. No stranger to Hotels after so much time on the road, Dani always made it a point to get a good feel for the layout of a building, the entrances and exits and the visibility of a place once she arrived. Though she knew there was very little danger here, old habits die hard, especially ones that have saved your hide in the past. Her eyes glanced over the dull yet trying to be cheery interior of this anonymous room and found four possible Exits before resting yet again on her companion and her plight.  
  
"Not really uncomfortable, it's just that, it's freaky being in costume like this." Cessily put a new set of clothes onto the bed with the bottom cuff of the pants almost touching the floor. As Dani watched, her face went blank and she seemed to melt into a small stream that dashed across the carpet towards the foot of the bed. It slithered up the pant legs of the new set of clothes and slushed into the waiting top. As her standing form melted completely away leaving the device and her old clothes behind, her true form filled in and solidified in the new clothes. "I mean, what if I slip out of solid form and drop it?" She was now in her true form, a red haired girl with pupil less eyes and metallic gray skin with vertical strips running from head to toe.  
  
"I see what you mean." Dani said, not quite used to Cessily's silver power. This was the first time Dani had seen her use it, though she had heard about what she could do. The tall older mutant thought to herself, "I'd be very concerned about being out in public if I were this girl. I hope Xavier knew what he was doing in asking me to take her with me. There must be a plan here." Thinking about Xavier, She realized that she should probably give the Professor a call. "I'm going to check in with the institute and let them know where here."  
  
Moonstar picked up the phone and called Xavier's, getting Charles in his office.  
  
"Hi, Professor, It's Dani."  
  
Xavier smiled into the phone on the other end. "I guess Charles is out of the question."  
  
"Right now at least, yep, seems that way. I just wanted to let you know I've arrived safely and the kids, Xi'an and I are setting up shop."  
  
Xavier shouted "Kids?!" in to the phone, startling Dani. After some stunned silence he said, "I'll be right there, let me head to cerebro"  
  
A few moments later Charles's astral projection was in the room. This freaked out Cessily who was not at all used to it and her skin rippled slightly. "Dani, what do you remember from this mornings meeting?" Xavier said, coming closer to the tall, tan young woman.  
  
"You asked me to take Xi'an and our charges with me on my recruiting trip, to train them in new mutant first contact." She had a defensive feeling about this as if she were on trial.   
  
Xavier's projection looked at her strangely, "You don't think that is rather peculiar?"  
  
Dani thought hard "Well I didn't at the time but now I find it kind of strange." She looked at his face and said "What's going on?"  
  
"That, my dear, is what I intend to figure out. Can you open your mind to me? Good."  
  
To Xavier's skilled and trained intellect, Dani's mind looked like an art gallery. He wound through the rooms quickly, past a sign that read "New Exhibits" and found a painting with crayon marks on it. Delving into the picture he saw himself being scratched over and redrawn. On the wall there was a smiley-type face with the tongue sticking out and a note saying, "Esme was here. Phhhhtttt!"   
  
In the Gummy Factory, John and Rick are proceeding with their plan while looking over the array of candy before them. Whispering, Rick looked at John and said, "Yo, dude, what are we doing?"   
  
"Not this again. Look, man, all we have to do is steal a candy bar or something and let the old dude chase us out. That's it."  
  
"Yea, but what if they find out about Timmy. They will know that it was us that helped him"  
  
"You saw that costume, there is no way that people will mistake that big dude for Tim."   
  
Rick looked at the familiar middle-aged bald man behind the counter. He was now starting to take an interest in the boys. Rick kept his voice low. "Man, this is Tim. A year ago he was a total looser pipsqueak. He shows up as a well-financed hookup, people are bound to figure out that something is up. Plus, this is ridiculous. Were being lackeys for a freak like the Toad or something. Don't even kid yourself that it's the other way around."  
  
Sighing, John said, "I guess your right. So, what do we do?"  
  
"We buy our stuff and then run out of the store. Follow my lead."   
  
Outside the store and hidden from view, Tim waited to see his friends come out. "Come on, what's keeping you" he said balling up gray ice matter on his hands with an impatient crackle. As if on queue the two older boys ran out of the building with stuff in their hands. With an audible creaking sound Tim covered himself with ice and jumped out onto the sidewalk. Coating the ground a head of him with the nearly transparent gray material, he slid quickly into the store.   
  
"Ahhhh!" Both he and the store clerk screamed simultaneously. He had expected to be alone but failed to realize that no one had come out chasing his friends. Black Ice acted on instinct and blasted the middle-aged clerk in the chest with some of his ice. As the crackling mass of gray solidified on the man, he slumped to the ground and shivered out "c c c cooooold!!" then passed out.  
  
Black Ice shouted "Oh My God!" and jumped over the counter next to the older man. He was pale and unresponsive. Tim thought he was dead.   
  
As he was looking over the man, the other store clerk came out from the back room with a baseball bat and took a swing at Black Ice's head. The blow cracked off Tim's face Ice, exposing his true face to the clerk for a moment.   
  
Ducking his head Black Ice threw the slippery ice on the floor of the store, which set with a staticy "sirrrrrrrrip! The younger clerk found no footing at all on the floor and slipped immediately. Blowing past him Black Ice slid through the door way and, slicking the pavement in front of him, quickly charged down the street.  
  
Room 105 - Josh and David's room:   
  
David puzzled over "6 Easy Pieces" from the only decent reading chair in the room when he thought he smelled something. Looking up, he saw that Josh had taken off his shoes and was lying on the bed. "How is it that someone who should be in impeccable health should have such horrendous hygiene."  
  
Josh looked at the water spot in the motel ceiling. "How is it that someone who should understand people and how they think should be so ignorant in the ways of tennis shoe funk?"  
  
"Bad enough I have to room with you at home." The handsome black mutant scoffed.  
  
"Yea well, complaint department's down the hall." Josh sat up and looked inquisitively at David. "You know, maybe if I tried hard enough I can heal that annoying cut under your nose."  
  
David Looked back at him for a moment as he settled back down then said with a smirk, "Hey, that was actually pretty good. Come up with that yourself?"  
  
"uh huh." Josh said quietly, rubbing his scruffy blonde hair. "Took me a while too. You try using a healing power in a joke."  
  
"Yes," David agreed in his more usual aloof tone, "humor is supposed to leave you in stitches"  
  
Room 103 - Sofia and Laurie's room:  
  
"This is fun. Do we get to keep these little soaps?"  
  
Laurie scanned through the TV channels while her ever-cheerful roommate investigated the rather run of the mill hotel room. "Sure, I guess. Sofia, don't you find it odd that we're here? I mean, what are we doing here anyway?"  
  
"We are being tourists. We are here to learn about the humans in this part of the country. I for one am curious about this "Middle America" people keep talking about. And Cleveland! I hear people say that this city rocks! I wonder if Drew Carey really lives here?"  
  
Laurie still thought it was weird. In all her time at Xavier's, she never heard of anyone taking a trip like this. Especially when you might make a first encounter with a new mutant and a prospective student. "I still think it's strange." She said to herself quietly.  
  
Sofia came out with her brunette locks tucked into a disposable shower cap. Smiling at her own silliness she said, "Hey look! Shower Hats!" and stood grinning.  
  
Dropping the remote from astonishment, the blonde girl said, "Then again, look who I'm with."  
  
Striking a playful pose, Sofia said, "You mock my beauty only because you are green with jealousy and have no fashion sense!" and stomped back into the bathroom leaving a speechless Laurie amused and alone with her thoughts.  
  
Room 104 - Victor and Xi'an's room:  
  
Victor laid down on one of the single beds and watched TV. Right next to the tube was a dish of peanuts he had put out earlier. Looking over at Xi'an, busily working away at the suitcase full of electronics stuff, he tried to eat a peanut from a dish with his long agile tongue. Unfortunately for him, he missed. His tongue instead wraps it's self around the complimentary shoe polish that was on the counter. With a wide-eyed gasp, Victor realized that instead of a tasty peanut he got a black waxy puck of shoe polish. Wide eyed, he spat it out and bolted out of bed to get some water.  
  
Xi'an begins to pick up signals on the cerebra. Forge's suitcase sized wonder machine springs to life and she gets an instant report of the findings. As her brow furrows over the distressing contents of the printout, Dani walks in. "This is not right. The kids shouldn't have come. We're going home"  
  
"Well then we've got a problem, our boy is on the move." Xi'an handed Dani the printout. "Police scanners report possible mutant criminal activity at the same location as our cerebra contact, and it has his powers as being very active. It's only a few blocks from here."  
  
"Dang." She said as Victor came back into the room still looking ill. "Ok then, get the address and put it on our map. I'll get the kids and meet you at the van."  
  
"You want to take the kids?" Xa'in said, surprised.  
  
Dani said on her way out the door, "Remember all the stuff we used to do when Magneto wasn't around?"  
  
Xi'an smiled mischievously. Quickly she had a look of dawning realization and then just as quickly frowned. "Point taken. I'll see you outside"  
  
Many miles from Cleveland, May Armstrong and her friend Jannie Black make their way to the Star Diner to trade gossip. It was a blustery and cold day so the girls walked in silent determination. Finally May spoke up.  
  
  
  
"Hey Ms. Jannie" she started. The girls had called each other Ms since they had Ms. Kerkonkel in fourth grade six years ago. "Do you ever get headaches? Like, really bad ones?"  
  
"What, you mean like migraines or something?" Jannie replied around a wad of gum. "Nah, but my Uncle used to. He uses pills now. Why?"  
  
"Well I've been getting really bad ones. It's like, when it starts to really hurt, some things take on a weird glow, kinda. But the outline is crystal clear. It's hard to explain." May lowered her head and her blonde locks hid her face from view. The pain in the back of her head suddenly spiked and it kept all she had to keep her friend from noticing. As she looked down there was a manhole cover in the sidewalk. It took on a definition and a shape for her that was beyond what she could normally see, and she could swear she could see the bottom of it. The tiny girl was sure that she was seeing these things even though that was impossible from this angle. The pain subsided and she convinced herself that she was imagining things.   
  
"Sounds like migraines to me. My Uncle Bill said that he'd go half blind with them. He took some pills and they started to go away. You might want to see the doctor, get rid of your weirdness."  
  
"Yah", May said back with a smile. "No call for anything to be weird here in Springfield. Nothing weird ever happens here."  
  
As the girls continued to walk, once again in silence, the manhole cover that had been the focus of May's unexplained pain started to quiver. It silently began to slowly lift off the ground. Quickly gaining speed, it continued to accelerate straight up until at about 1000 feet it obtained escape velocity and blasted out into the cosmos, destined for parts unknown.  
  
To be continued. 


	4. The Kids Hit the Skids

Gravity Well Chapter 4 - The Kids Hit the Skids  
  
Cast:  
  
Dani Moonstar - illusions   
  
Xi'an Coy Manh - Mind Possession   
  
David Alleyne - Proximity knowledge transfer  
  
Josh Foley - healer   
  
Sofia Mantega - Wind manipulation  
  
Laurie Collins - Emotional pheremones  
  
Victor Borkowski - Prehensile Tongue  
  
Cessily Kincaid - Mercury based malleable body,  
  
Black Ice/Timmy Jenkins - Creation of frictionless material, drains energy when setting.  
  
What has gone before.  
  
The world has changed. An increasing number of mutants necessitates an increasing need to care and teach these often misunderstood, young souls. This has become the new charge of Charles Xavier and his Institute, to care for these New Mutants. Because of this, some have taken to calling Xavier's Mutant High, as it is much more a school than an Institute. To this end, Professor Xavier has charged one of his former students - Dani Moonstar - to recruit new mutants for the school who would otherwise not have found this accepting educational sanctuary.  
  
Such a recruiting trip was enough of an excuse to fool Dani into bringing her friend Xi'an Coy Manh and their young student charges: David - Proximity knowledge transfer, Josh- healer , Sofia - Wind manipulation, Laurie - emotional pheremones, Victor - Prehensile Tongue and Cessily - Mercury based malleable body, half way across America, effectively removing them from Xavier's Institute. No doubt the ruse was to further some sinister plan by the mysterious Xorn and his accomplice Esme.  
  
Speaking of sinister plans, our group of mutants find that the emerging mutant they were to recruit has hatched a sinister plan of his own. Using his newly discovered powers Black Ice had planned to steal money from a local store in order to set up an enterprise selling pot to his friends. The primary motivation of this Black Ice, AKA Timmy Jenkins is to be "cool" in the eyes of his friends. Instead, his friends have secretly betrayed him and he now flees the scene of his intended crime thinking he has just committed a much worse offense than he had planned. He also has no idea that in addition to the authorities, Xavier's New Mutant team is on the way to investigate this situation.  
  
Black Ice slid down the street. "I've killed someone!" he thought. "Maybe I am bad. Maybe mutants are just plain evil like some people say. I never thought I was evil, but the first time I really use my powers, I go and kill some old guy." Up ahead of him he spotted his two friends walking away from the store. He caught up to them, slid around and faced them.  
  
"So how'd it go, Magneto?" Rick said, surprised that he had caught up so quickly.  
  
Black Ice let his outer shell wane and he slowly began to shrink back into Tim. While he shrunk he said, "They never followed you. T-t-the guy. I thought he was going to hit me,.. I-I-I got scared. So I 'Iced' him!"  
  
The boys looked at each other.  
  
"I think he might have died!" Tim said, as he finally became himself again. He was so busy being upset he didn't see the other boys back away from him. "He should have followed you. No one should have been hurt!" The boys started to turn their backs on Tim.  
  
"We didn't do anything wrong. Call the cops man! We didn't do anything wrong!!" Rick said in a panic. John pulled out his cell phone.  
  
As he dialed he said "911. They can send an ambulance!"  
  
Tim balled up his hand with ice and shouted, "NO!" He threw the ice at John's cell phone, enveloping John's hand with it.  
  
"AAAAAAHHHHHH!" John cried as the ice set around his hand "Get it off. It's FREEZING!!!! Tim! Make it STOP!!"  
  
But Tim had no idea how to make it stop. He felt horrible hurting his friend but his friend was going to rat him out. And why hadn't the cashier followed them as he had any other time they had been bad in the store? Timmy started to ice up as Rick and John focused on John's hand. "Wait," Tim thought, "They said they didn't do anything wrong. They double crossed me! They never followed the plan!"  
  
"You heard him, freak, get your freak stuff off of him. It's killing him!" Rick continued in vain to try to get a firm grasp on the ethereal gray material. Tim finished to morphing into Black Ice as John finally passed out.  
  
His voice boomed out, "You betrayed me! You set me up to fail!!! Not cool, Rick. Not cool at all!!!" He iced the entire sidewalk sending both boys sliding down the slope of the street.   
  
The van carrying the New Mutants came around the corner at the bottom of the hill. Dani slammed on the brakes in order to avoid running over the two boys that were inexplicably zooming toward them but the van kept going. The brakes were totally useless. By now the entire street was covered with Black Ice and the van started to slide out of control. Sofia saw this from between the two front seats and reacted first. She blew the two boys to safety but in her haste, her winds knocked the van off the road.  
  
Smash!!!! The van ran into a stone retaining wall and spun around on the ice until, SMASH! It hit a tree on the other side of the road. The rear doors were completely warped around the tree. From the back seat Laurie shook off the dizzying effects of the jarring accident and looked around. Josh was a little freaked too but otherwise unharmed. Turning the other way she saw Cessily's body, or what was left of it. Everything higher than the seat back was now gone. Laurie screamed as she saw the rest of Cessily's body melt in the seat beside her, leaving her clothes and her image inducer.  
  
"Oh my god!" David said, looking at the pool of quicksilver that was unnaturally leaking out the back door.  
  
Dani heard the shouting from the back and turned around. "Every One ok? Where's Cessily? Laurie stop screaming." Suddenly it was pandemonium as all of the vans occupants were gripped by a tremendous fear of dying. Only Dani was able to remain calm, as she had repeatedly fought back her fear of death. She had been a Valkyrie and battled Hella, the Norse goddess of death, for the souls of the worthy dead.  
  
Sofia again acted first and rashly. She brought the strongest wind she could into the car through the broken windows and smashed door seals. The air pressure blew the roof off of the van with a loud "RRRRAAAAK" of ripping metal. Sofia blindly lifted herself out and away. Everyone else, still in their seats, started to calm down. As Laurie's pheromones began to disperse in the now roofless van.  
  
"It's ok, Laurie, stop!" Dani tried to console the quivering young blonde.  
  
Stuttering, Laurie managed, "B -b-b-b ut she's dead!"  
  
"Who's dead?" Cessily said from behind the now roofless car. Everyone looked at her. She was good as new except for the fact that she was missing her left arm. She was also wearing nothing but her now very much longer red hair. It fell purposefully down around her breasts, concealing all that she wished to hide. Irritated, she said, "You guys want to turn around? And can someone find my inducer? A girl looses her head for a while and everyone starts blowing things up!"  
  
David burst out "Your arm! You lost your arm!"  
  
"Nah, it's just slow." A puddle of liquid silver creped from under a fence and ran into Cessily's bare foot. As it was absorbed into her foot her arm grew back out. "Now someone help me out and throw me my clothes!" To emphasize the point she morphed into a grumpy looking quicksilver mailbox with a head.  
  
Josh looked at Victor and David, shook his head and said, "OK, that's just messed up."  
  
Sofia, having blown herself high in the air, finally crash-landed next to the two boys. Looking across the street at the remains of the van, she could see the street's surface loosing some of its shine. The faint crackle of blue-gray electricity played on across the asphalt before it became normal again. She looked at the two boys. One was passed out and looked very pale, the other, though scared looked OK. "Josh!!!!!" She shouted over to the van. "Josh!!! Get over here!!!"  
  
The young mutant healer gingerly tested the surface of the road before running over to Sofia and the two boys. "You hurt, Sofia?" he asked.  
  
"Not me. Him!" She pointed at the unconscious boy.   
  
He looked momentarily at the cell phone still stuck to his hand with the evaporating and crackling gray ice. "Aw, freaky. OK, hold on buddy." Josh touched the boy and he woke up, but the dissipating 'ice' on his hands made him instantly scream.  
  
"Cold!!!!!" Josh kept healing and eventually the 'ice' dispersed completely with a final crackling pop. John looked at him gratefully as he was healed. "Thanks." The boy managed as he stretched back on the slushy grass, exhausted from his ordeal.  
  
By this time David, Victor and Xi'an had come over to see what was happening. David's power instantly gave him all the knowledge the two boys possessed, especially about the traumatic events of this morning. He pointed up the street. "Half way up the hill there is a side street. He went down that street not more than two minutes ago. Josh, there is someone else who was blasted by this same stuff in a store at the top of the hill. We should get you up there. Xi'an, this boy's name is Timmy Jenkins. He's upset because these two boys set him up and now he's convinced that he's killed someone."  
  
"Well, has he?" Xi'an asked as David and Josh started to run up the hill.   
  
David didn't slow his pace but shouted back "Hopefully not. Not if we can help it. Find this kid. He's out of control, but he's basically a good kid. We'll try to keep him from being a murder." The two roommates ran up the hill before anyone could stop them.  
  
Jannie and May burst out of the cold and into the shiny warmth of the Star Diner. As the tiny blonde girl looked around her head began to throb and spike making her wince. Lifting her head, she noticed almost nonchalantly that she was looking at a stack of clean plates as they headed toward the tile floor. "Crash!!!!" In front of the two girls, the hostess flinched at the sound behind her, smiled a distracted, painful smile, and said, "Hi, Just sit anywhere." She quickly turned around to investigate the mess.   
  
"Don't mind if we do!" the Taller girl said to the hostesses back. May noticed that her head didn't hurt as bad as when she came in. "These migraines are funny things. You'd think my head would hurt worse after a loud noise like that, not feel better!" she thought to herself. They scrunched into a booth away from the diner's windows and started to gossip.  
  
When David and Josh arrived at the Gummy Factory, the younger clerk was outside the store looking franticly for the cops or the ambulance to show up. The young mutants ran up to him. "Hey, uh,.." Josh started but David cut him off.  
  
"I understand there is someone injured here." David said with an air of authority. His powers were providing him with the clerk's knowledge of the situation and he formed a plan.  
  
The clerk looked suspicious. "Yea, who are you?"  
  
David confidently lied. "We are off duty paramedics who live in the area. The dispatch just called us to see if we could help while the ambulance got here. Can we see the patient?"  
  
"Uh, sure. I haven't moved him. He's got some kinda stuff on him. Won't come off. Hey, where is your stuff? Don't you guys have stuff?"  
  
Josh jumped in, "The others will be here shortly, I'll see what I can do with my hands until then." He went immediately around to the old man who still had the gray 'ice' crackling on his chest. "OK, buddy, let's get this going." he said quietly.  
  
David said "Can you keep a lookout for the others and wave them in for us, I need to help my friend." The clerk nodded agreement and went back out in front of the store.  
  
Josh touched the man as he had previously touched the boy but there was no immediate response. He continued to try and he asked David "What was that? Why do you always have to cut me off? This still that Reaver, disrespect thing? I can talk too you know!"  
  
"I did a quick read of the clerk when I got close to him and formulated a lie that he would accept so that we can heal this man. You want to go back and tell him that were from Xavier's and were here to help?"  
  
Finding this healing more taxing than he thought, josh said, "No, fibs are good. I'm ok with lying." He started to push his powers more to revive this man.   
  
He found himself envisioning the man's body. In faint outlines, he could sense that where he touched the clerks body, an energetic flow poured in, healing the man. The flow was obviously going to the parts of his body affected by the ice - his chest and upper arms - but he also noticed that the flow was going to the man's liver. It went to a particular part of his liver, actually.   
  
David awakened Josh from this vision by pulling him away from the man. "Dude, this guy has cancer! I don't know what I can do for cancer."   
  
"That's really too bad, but I now know how to run an IV line through someone's ankle. Our time is up, we've got to go."  
  
"What?"  
  
David was making his way to the back of the store. "Josh, the paramedics are here - the REAL paramedics. And there is a cop who just showed up who has a hate on for mutants. We have to run!" The studious mutant shoved his way through the fire door setting off alarms just as the sirens of the ambulance approached.  
  
Josh looked at the man quickly, gave him one last grasp, which woke him up and ran out the back door. The man saw Josh get up and stumble through the fire door. He wondered if that boy was an angel, come to give him back his soul.  
  
Back in Springfield, the Star Diner had crumbled into the organized chaos of a really bad breakfast shift. As the waitress walked from around the counter with two plates of food she suddenly lost her grip. "Crash!"  
  
"What's wrong with the Waitroid? That's the third thing that's broken since we got here."  
  
May giggled, "Shhhh! Jannie! She'll hear you." Her friend just smirked at her. "You're bad." The thought entered May's mind that the diner had suddenly begun to be a problem after the two of them got there. Maybe the waitress was giving them the eye or something and it's throwing off her game. "Ewww! Creepy lesbian!" she thought. She noticed, that she was still having weird visions of things around her, like the vision she had of the manhole cover on the way here. Her head still hurt, but it was now like a dull ache that seemed to surround these weird visions of objects. What she hadn't noticed was that these objects seem to be the things that are winding up being broken.  
  
In his Black Ice persona, Timmy slipped down the streets until he got to the baseball field. Ahead of him was the diamond and home plate. This was normally a short cut but under the circumstances it had a drawback. He found that he couldn't make enough ice to make the grass slick for sliding so he ran across the outfield. As he ran he went through this morning in his mind. "John and Rick betrayed me. They MADE me kill that clerk. I have to get away! Maybe someone will take me in. Like Magneto or someone!"  
  
The new mutants had carefully followed his ice-like trail. Sofia had pushed them along on a sled made from the remains of the top of the van. They caught up to the large gray icy horned mutant just as he was nearing the infield.   
  
Cessily said, "I'll block his path!" She quickly morphed and slithered away across the field like a metal snake.   
  
Victor also started after Black Ice. The green mutant thought to himself, "Maybe I could slow him down or talk some sense into him. This is my first big chance to use my powers to try to help someone! Better not blow it." He spotted a low-lying tree branch just in front and above him. With his mutant tongue, he grabbed it and used it to fling himself over the outfield, faster than anyone could run.  
  
Looking at the scene, Dani said to Xi'an, "This is a nightmare." She yelled to Victor, "Don't Victor, He'll hurt you."  
  
Black Ice heard Dani's cry and whipped around. He failed to see the silver streak that shot past his feet but he couldn't help noticing Victor. Black Ice, who thought he was alone on the ball field, found himself only 30 feet from this strange mutant with green skin and head spikes. The fleeing mutant boomed, "Leave me alone!" Out of control and scared he unleashed a barrage of his 'ice' at this obvious opponent. Unlike his past targets, Victor was on guard and dodged the projectiles. They hit the outfield fence right next to Laurie with an angry crackle, making the sheepish blonde mutant let out a small squeak of surprise. Victor was quick to recover and shot his tongue at Black Ice, grabbing him by the head and pulling him down into the slushy infield dirt. Though the attack was successful, Victor screamed incoherently and did not retract his tongue completely. Where it had touched Black Ice his tongue was slightly gray.  
  
Xi'an shouted "Victor! Oh my! Sofia get him out of there!" Sofia responded by hitting Victor with a gust of wind that blew him away from Black Ice and closer to where they were standing.  
  
Meanwhile, not far away, David was making his way at a full sprint toward the baseball field with Josh unhappily running behind. The older black mutant was relieved that he could still picture a map of the area for them to follow. His companion was just huffing, running along blindly, and being very confused.  
  
"WAIT! Wait..." Josh said bent over, breathing hard "Dude, what are we running from?"  
  
David had stopped and looked around. This was a residential street lined with older single-family homes. He suddenly ran toward one of them and ducked down a small staircase leading to the basement of the house. Josh followed as close behind as he could but wasn't managing very well. At David's insistence, both boys ducked as far down into the stairwell as they could to hide.  
  
"What are we running from?" David whispered. "Remember that cop I told you about? Along with weapons training and police procedures, he was learning how to take down mutants. I think that guy would have shot first and asked questions later."   
  
"Click!" The boys heard the unmistakable sound of a gun being readied to fire and froze. "Just don't tempt me to shoot. Come on out of there, boys. No funny moves ether." The boys came out of there hiding place to find one of Cleveland's Finest with his service revolver pointed at them. "Howdy. Name's Officer Ween. You all really need to tell me what's going on."  
  
Putting her hands in the air Dani said, "this is hopeless, our powers are useless here!"  
  
"You are right, we may as well not even try, we shouldn't be here! The children are sure to be hurt doing this" Xa'in put in.  
  
Sofia was about to agree when she turned to Laurie with wide concerned eyes. Almost being hit by the ice must have scared her into thinking her powers are useless and she is projecting that to the others assembled at the outfield fence though her pheromones. Sofia's first reaction was to let Laurie know that it wasn't her fault that she was almost hurt by the ice and to make her feel better about herself. But then a shrewd idea come to mind and she said "Your powers are useless, Laurie. You couldn't even defend yourself from that ice ball. You're worse than Beak!" Laurie was shocked by this and began to cry and stammer. She did not notice the gentile breeze that was now surrounding her. The breeze was taking her pheromones and channeling them into the infield where Black Ice lay in the dirt. Hoping that her friend would forgive her she continued. "I have absolutely no faith in anything your power can do. You are a weakling!"   
  
The blonde mutant looked at her friend in amazement. Why was she saying these things? Why was she waiving her hands like that? She usually only does that when she has her power working.  
  
The spell of Laurie's self doubt was broken. "Good job Sofia, nice team work! Laurie, Keep it up!" Dani shouted encouragement to the two girls then looked at her old friend. "Can you possess him?"  
  
"No his thoughts are too slippery, I can't get a lock. I think his 'ice' shell is interfering with me."  
  
Dani shook her head. "Well, let me get a little closer and I'll see what I can do."  
  
As Dani approached, Black Ice was battling his inner demons. Thanks to Laurie's self doubt, he was now inundated with feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness. There is no way he can get out of this. His powers were useless! He made one last look at the exit to the left of home plate. Someone had put up a new gate!! He couldn't run that way! In front of him was the green kid who pulled him into the muddy snow and now there were more coming up behind him.  
  
Suddenly he was in a jail cell. He was looking at his disappointed parents through the bars of a jail cell. He got up and faced his parents. "Mom, I'm so sorry, mom!" Black Ice wept and beged for forgiveness from his parents through the cold steel bars of his prison.   
  
As Dani approached Victor, Laurie caught on to what was happening. She realized that it was her pheromones that were shutting down Black Ice. Despite herself she felt betrayed by Sofia, but at the same time that she was very powerful and could accomplish much with her powers.  
  
Black Ice received the now more confident pheromones from Laurie on Sofia's winds and yelled "No!!!! This can't be happening!" He grabbed for the bars only to find they were not real. The illusion melted away and Dani stood revealed.   
  
"Give it up. We don't want to hurt you. It's over Timmy." She said. He couldn't give up. He was a powerful mutant! He could still run away.  
  
"No!" he said and started to run to the fence and was beginning to climb it when - "BANG"  
  
From the other side of the outfield a cop, flanked by an astonished David and an out of breath Josh had fired on Black Ice.  
  
  
  
Timmy grabbed his right thigh. The bullet had gone right through his leg, crippling him. He started to cry. His 'ice' began to evaporate with a static noise, revealing his true 13 year old appearance.  
  
"Dude! You SHOT him?" Josh said to Officer Ween.  
  
Putting his gun away and getting out his nightstick he said, "What do you think I should do, boy? He's a fleeing suspect of aggravated assault, attempted robbery with a deadly weapon and a bunch a other stuff I haven't even gotten to yet. Besides, I just winged 'em." The officer approached Timmy and started to read his rights.  
  
In the doorway to the right of homeplate Cessily formed herself into a pool of quicksilver and moved through the infield toward Xi'an. The puddle came over to the Asian mutant and she dropped the wristwatch like image inducer on the ground. Cessily quickly formed back into her normal body with the inducer on her wrist and switched it on, giving her a normal appearance. Jumping excitedly next to Xi'an she said, "Did you see?! I took the shape of a chain link gate and padlock to fool Black Ice! It worked!"   
  
Xi'an looked over the scene. Laurie was yelling at Sofia about being a terrible friend, Josh looked pale and about ready to pass out after healing Victor's tongue, Dani and David were talking to the officer who was now helping paramedics take Black Ice to the hospital "Yea," Xian muttered, "that went well."   
  
Coming up next ..... What now? 


	5. What now?

Gravity Well Chapter 5 - What now?  
  
BOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!!!! Crash smash, smash, crack! A large building explodes in a great ball of flame. Huge pieces of stone and flaming wood rain down from the sky as the initial blast that ripped from the center of the building travels upward toward the heavens. Low hanging clouds over the area give way to the evil fireball, seeming to fear their own destruction. The carnage of the scene is immense. Ripped pieces of building continue to scatter over the large lawn and once beautiful landscaping for minutes before coming to rest. New explosions then continued to emanate from the building and the now damaged buildings adjacent to it. As the shell of the main building began to crumble in on itself, the out buildings continued to burn, casting a scene not appropriate for earth, but Hell. Flames leapt freely from the cracking shells of the burning buildings as all the former inhabitants of the building were ether too involved with other problems to put them out or had shook off this mortal coil and were beyond caring.  
  
Hours later the flames flickered on the last of whatever was left to burn and choking smoke blanketed the area. On one of the largest pieces of rubble only one word of a large sign, cracked in two by debris is readable that word : "Xavier's"  
  
"This is the scene at Xavier's Institute in upstate New York today as some sort of as yet unexplained phenomenon seems to have ripped the school apart from inside. Civilian authorities and X-Corp representatives are accessing the situation. Meanwhile, New York City seems to be inside a black out zone. More on this as the situation develops. In related news, the State house of Missouri is planning to hear a referendum on genetic testing for drivers licenses, our own James Hand has an interview with a major backer of the measure - Kendal Marks.,....."  
  
"Oh my god! Look at those pictures!!" the tiny blonde girl said to her friend. Everyone in The Star Diner had stopped to take a look at the news flash on TV. "Jannie, I really wonder how many people died!"  
  
"None at all I'm sure, Ms May," Jannie said, "Just mutants."  
  
"What, you don't think Mutants are people?"  
  
"Well,... No! I mean, not really. Aren't they all like half animal or made of wood or something? I mean really, do you even notice that you have been killed if you are half a tree? Like that Jumbo Carnation guy, He was made of PLASTIC!"  
  
May shook her head. "They still managed to kill him. I don't know. They seem like people. They talk to you and all"  
  
Jannie motioned with her hand, trying to emphasize her point. "Look, if a computer program over a chat room can convince you that it was real, does that mean that that same program feels any different when it is deleted? How do we know that these things have feelings at all? Look at what they do to each other!"  
  
May looked up at the screen at the complete carnage in New York. "You might have a point there."  
  
Josh, David and Dani got a ride to the hospital with Officer Ween while the other students waited along with the remains of the van for a replacement. From the passengers seat in the squad car, Josh turned around and looked at David through the protective bars. Without a word he chuckled at the humor of his roommate's apparent situation. David, being more mature, rolled his eyes at the younger boy's mirth. "So Dani, what now? Do we just go home?"  
  
"You go home." Dani Moonstar said to the young black mutant. "I, on the other hand, have a job to do"  
  
"The girl in Missouri?"  
  
"Yep. X-corp is sending someone to help secure Black Ice and take you guys back to the Institute. I just called them. They said there's a representitive in this city and he's on his way to help us out. Probably at the hospital already, actually."  
  
"So you are just taking the plane and heading to Springfield?" Josh asked from the front seat.  
  
Dani smiled a painful smile. "No, Not exactly. You guys are going back in the Lear," She let the comment hang for a bit. "I'm flying coach"  
  
"Well that's gota feel good." Josh snickered turning his back on them  
  
Dani looked at David who was rolling his eyes again. She stuck out her tounge and made a face at the back of Josh's head making David smile. Quietly she said to David, "Sorry. Couldn't help myself"   
  
Soon they were parked at the hospital. As Josh made small talk with Officer Ween, Dani and David hung back.   
  
"David, I'm going to try to play down this incident as much as I can. This kid has really created a disaster for us. It's not that I ever wanted to put you in danger or expose you to the public, and I oppologize. But still, I'm glad you're here. Those people would have died without you and Josh, I'm sure of it. Then instead of a crazy mutant, you would have had a crazy mutant murderer."  
  
"It seems like I really didn't do all that much." David shrugged. "Though, I did keep Josh out of trouble so he could do treat that man. You know he's not out of the woods yet. There was still some ice on him when we had to leave and Josh mentioned that he also had cancer."  
  
"Really? Well, That's a shame." She collected her thoughts. "As much as I hate to do this, I'd like you to get Josh in to heal the clerk. Just see what he can do to help the poor man. We haven't saved this kid from a murder rap yet. It may seem cold but I'm less concerned about the man's existing ailment than his wounds from Black Ice. I'm also concerned about anyone finding out about our involvement. Public displays of a power like Healing would only entice people who would exploit us."  
  
David looked at her and said "I'm sure Josh wouldn't mind finishing the healing on that man. He seemed kind of pissed that I made him stop before. We'll see what we can do without getting caught."  
  
"Good. I'll tell Officer Ween that you guys are going to get lunch, which actually wouldn't be a bad idea, once all this stuff is settled down. This has been a long day"  
  
"Well," Said David, "It's not over yet!"  
  
Officer Ween and Dani went to check on Timmy Jenkins. He was in the protective custody room attached to the ICU with a two IV's - one blood, the other clear and a heart monitor attached to him. As they came in the room a nurse left, closing the door behind her.  
  
Dani started to speak when Officer Ween cut her off. "Please Ms Moonstar, I got to go first.", he explained and read Timmy his rights. "You understand what I'm telling you son?" Timmy nodded his head. The officer then looked at Dani and said, "You know, the same thing applies to you Ms. Moonstar. I don't exactly know what happened out on that ball field today, but vigilante activity is still a crime in this state."  
  
"I appreciate the warning, officer. Timmy and I here are just going to have a little chat if that's ok with him."  
  
Officer Ween went over to the boys' bedside. "They say your not in any danger from your wounds, it'll just hurt for a while. Ms. Moonstar here wants to talk to you. Is that ok or do you want to be left alone until your lawyer gets here?"  
  
Timmy looked at Dani and then at the officer and said meekly, "No, it's ok, I'll talk to her."  
  
"Ok, son, just remember, Ms. Moonstar is not a lawyer so you have no confidentiality." With that, Officer Ween slipped out of the room letting the door loudly click on his way out.  
  
Dani came over and sat in the lone chair in the observation room. "I suppose you might be a little angry right now."  
  
"You hurt me! You made me feel terrible! Your friends blocked my escape, hunted me! Set me up to get shot!!!" Timmy blurted out, tearing up and twisting his face with as much rage as he could manage in his sedated state.   
  
Dani got up and hovered a bit over Timmy and looked him right in the eyes. "Yes, it's terrible when Mutants take advantage, isn't it Timmy? Your friend is here too, being checked out by the Doctors, and the police." Timmy's eyes turned wide for a bit and Dani could feel a small tinge of fear in him through her mutant power. "Yes, Timmy, I'm afraid both of your former friends have told the police all about your adventure. Aren't you a little young to be stealing for drug money?"  
  
"It wasn't real drugs, its just pot!" Timmy started and then realized that he shouldn't be saying stuff like that.   
  
"Well" Dani huffed, "I'm not here to debate legalization. I could really care about the WHY, other than it was STUPID! What is much more important to me is the people you hurt and your frame of mind. Do you think that just because you were born with a gift that you can use it to take advantage of people?"  
  
"Smart people take advantage all the time! One or two smart kids can completely ruin a curve on a test. Jocks take advantage of their status on teams to get girls, so do musicians. Artists show off, so do cheerleaders and they are rewarded! Everyone with a talent reaps some benefit once they realize how."  
  
Dani became furious. "You are looking for a payoff here? Is that it? You want to be a big man because you are a mutant? Do you think that puts you above the law?"  
  
"Who are you people anyway? What right do you have to judge me?" Timmy shot back.  
  
Dani backed off and cooled down. "My name is Danielle Moonstar and I'm a member of the faculty for Xavier's Institute. We detected the energy signature of your mutant power and I was sent to talk to you."  
  
Timmy looked surprised "Hey, you are like an Xman? Well I'm a mutant in trouble! You got to help me!" His words twisted Dani's face into a vision of disgust. She looked as though she was talking to a human sized rat.  
  
"Don't you even try that with me! You used your powers on purpose! You used them with reasonable precision. And you used them against me and my students as well as some completely defenseless non-mutant humans. You aren't a mutant in trouble. You are a crook who got caught by some one who is stronger than you! You are a little boy motivated by greed and insecurity to commit acts that make people fear and hate our kind and worst of all, in spite of lying in this hospital bed, under guard you still think that you are above human law due to your special gifts. Well, let me tell you something, you are going to face human law, and X-corp is going to help make sure you are treated as any other prisoner, no better, but no less ether."   
  
Timmy thought for a second then said "Why are you here at all? Are you just gloating?"  
  
"I'm here ask you to be bigger than yourself here and to pay us back for cleaning up the messes you left behind here today. Look, you have done something with big picture consequences. Imagine the headline 'Mutant goes on Criminal Rampage in Cleveland' in every newspaper in the country. They are talking about you Timmy, and do you think you are going to get a fair trial? Do you think they are going to view you as anything but a monster? Now I came here to see if you wanted to come to the institute and learn how to make a better future for yourself as a human with special gifts. Unfortunately you have already used those gifts to break the law and hurt people and that limits your options substantially. They want to make an example of you Timmy, and the precedent that you might set could endanger the status of mutants everywhere. Which brings me to the choice. Ether you avail yourself of the representation, or you don't. It's that simple. X-corp is far more willing to endorse a vigorous legal defense than an appointed public defender. There is one thing I'd like you to do for us, however."  
  
"What's that?"  
  
"We want you to quietly plead guilty."  
  
Josh and David walked through the ICU like they owned the place, or at the very least, David did. The older mutant boy led his white blonde companion with his chest out and his face in an air of total belonging. Josh followed behind looking slightly ill with an expression on his face like he expected someone to come by and hit him with a rolled up newspaper. David strolled up to the desk and, with the skill of the intern seated there, read the board and found the newly arrived Clerk from the store. The line on the wall read "Mr. Martian Parker 3B." Without asking, David wheeled around and went straight for curtain area 3B, dragging Josh with him.  
  
David looked quickly through a crack in the curtain and once he was certain no hospital personnel were there, he and Josh disappeared inside.   
  
The man was on the bed still as a stone. Josh feared that they had come too late and looked at David. David just nodded his head toward the man and mouthed "Go on!" The young blonde mutant went to the man's bedside. Though he no longer had the gray ice like substance on him, he still looked very pale. The heart monitors said something that Josh didn't even pretend to understand. All he knew was that, for all the evidence, the effect of being hit with Black Ice's "Ice" was not something one recovered from well, if at all without his help. He looked at the man's nametag. "Mr. Parker?" He whispered. "Mr. Parker, if you can hear me, I'm the boy who tried to help you at the store. I think I can help you now but it's totally possible that you're too sick for me to help. I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to do my best, here, and hope things turn out ok."  
  
Mr. Parker stirred and opened his eyes a crack. "You're a good boy, whoever you are." He whispered back to josh. "You think you can help me, fine. If you can't, you tried. Makes you more a man than most. I know you are some kind of magic or something. Get me out of this and I'll buy you some candy." He smiled slightly and closed his eyes.  
  
Mr. Parker's hand creped out from under the sheets and Josh could see the USMC tattooed on his forearm in now faded blue ink. "But dude, you've got cancer in your liver." He whispered down to the now sleeping man. Josh looked up to where David was keeping a look out through a part in the curtains. "David,..." Josh pleaded. He was unsure if he could cure someone with a terminal disease like this. It was unlike anything he'd tried before. For all he knew, the cancer, which was the body turning on its self essentially, could grow out of control if he used his power on it.   
  
David turned around looking slightly nervous. "Josh, just make it quick." Josh thought to himself. "Dani wanted us to make sure this guy doesn't die but she also didn't want us to get caught using our powers on him incase we fail. No pressure here. For all I know this guys a war hero or something. Dude was just in the wrong place at the wrong time but I might kill him."  
  
"Mr. Parker, I'm going to start now" Josh said and held on to the man's arm. The flowing sensation that accompanies his mutant gift flowed through Josh like a warm breeze. Like a breeze, he had very little control over where the power went outside his body. Once again he looked through his power at the older man as if he was made of glass. Again he saw the black hole in his liver into which most of his power went. Progress was evident, however, as Mr. Parker opened his eyes and looked at Josh. "Welcome back dude," Josh said with an obvious strain. The older clerk settled back into the gurney after his initial shock and watched as Josh continued to apply his mutant power.   
  
Josh could see the healing take place in the man's chest and arms, once that was completed, he continued to pour everything he had into the spot in the mans liver. He noticed that it was getting smaller! He thought he might be able to do this. This guy may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time this morning but right now he was just in time to have Josh save his life. 'Dude was totally rugged. I can see where the power is trying to heal up old scars. He's even got some shrapnel in him! I'm going to get this cancer!' he thought to himself, unaware that he was becoming increasingly pale.  
  
Suddenly Josh blacked out completely and fell on the floor like a sack of flour. "Son!" The older man exclaimed from his bed. David turned around and couldn't see josh or feel his skills. He went around the gurney and picked up the pale and clammy young boy. "Is he going to be ok?"   
  
"I don't know" David replied, heading to the curtain. "He usually doesn't pass out like this." The older boy pulled Josh to a standing position and steadied him with his arm. "You can't tell anyone we were here! Promise!? Please?"  
  
Mr. Parker said, "You boys need to work on your black ops routine. Sure I won't squeal. This is a mutant thing right? Who you boys working for?"  
  
David gave up "Xavier. Were the good guys." Josh was starting to come back around a little.  
  
"I bet you are. Not everyone sees it that way, though. You best remember that. Why don't you run along now. Make like your friend is going to throw up, not too far off the truth, anyways. I bet if I peel off one of these stickies they'll think I bought it and it will give you some cover. Don't be fool enough to hang around or come back."  
  
Now that Mr. Parker was feeling better, David got all of this man's expertise and knew that he wasn't just dealing with a candy store clerk. "Yes sir, He responded. And Josh wanted to tell you something. I've got to make this quick. You have liver cancer sir."   
  
"I know." was his quick response. "One year to live. On the list but I ain't going to make it. Just like Sweetness. Coulda had worse company. Don't tell me the kid hurt himself trying to fix it." He looked at his hands and then back up at David. "Well you probably have no time at all left. Tell him I said thanks for trying. He's a good boy and so are you. You'al risked yourselves twice to help me today and I appreciate it. I met a lot of brave soldiers in 'Nam, but the medics were the bravest. You cover him."  
  
"Will do." David said. He stole into the next curtained partition, which was thankfully empty as alarms went off behind him. He could hear a large amount of commotion coming from the cubicle as he tossed Josh on a gurney. Using the knowledge of the people in the ward he quickly located a blanket and a new interns shirt from one of the cupboards around him. Within moments David pulled back the curtains and wheeled his patient down the hall.  
  
  
  
Timmy Jenkens had a blank and astonished look on his face. "I'm guilty?! Just like that? I just go quietly up the river to be some big bad man's,......"  
  
"Look! Tim, it's like this. You are GOING to be found guilty. With good legal representation you can serve out your time in, I don't know, juvenile hall or something like you would have if you had done the same thing with a gun. Let's not forget that you DID do a CRIME here. We are trying to keep you from going through a sensational public trial and making a terrible example of mutants in the nationwide media."  
  
"You mean you are trying to keep YOU from going to trial" Timmy shot back.  
  
"What? That's ridiculous"  
  
"You want to cover up your assault on me and keep your secret identities or something."  
  
Dani scrunched up her face. "Fine. Look, the lawyer will be here in a minuite and you had better listen for once or else you are going to do hard time and you will be the poster child for every mutant hating thug who wants us to be sent to Auschwitz. You want that?"  
  
"What I want is to get out of here" Timmy said trying to change to Black Ice. He found he couldn't concentrate enough with the pain in his leg and the drugs still in his system, blurring his mind. After an exhausted attempt he slumped back down in the bed.  
  
"Well that option is currently unavailable. As soon as X-corp arrives, you get a power dampener. Welcome to the real world kid." Dani left in a huff.  
  
Xi'an, Cessily, Victor, Laurie and Sofia showed up at the emergency ward waiting room just as Dani rounded the corner.  
  
"So how's IceBall or whatever the kid named himself" Xi'an asked her old friend.  
  
Dani shook her head. "You know, the kid just pisses me off. He thinks the world is out to get him."  
  
Xi'an put in "Well they are now. Sticking up a candy store will do that!"  
  
Dani continued "No it's like we spoiled his fun or something. I don't know what to do with that. No remorse, just infantile impetuousness. I hope this lawyer is pretty good."  
  
At that moment a tall bald white guy wearing sunglasses and a soul patch goatee came up to Dani. "Excuse me. Are you Ms. Moonstar by any chance?"  
  
"Uh, Yes. And you are?"  
  
"Ed Legit, X-corp junior council. They sent me here to take over your little matter. I assume you will be wanting to get on to whatever your next mission is and leave the cleanup to the professionals now. Am I right?" The man was tall, in a white suit with a black shirt and a red tie. He looked sharp and shook Dani's hand the entire time he was talking. Now he was smiling uncomfortably close to her.  
  
She snatched her hand back as if she had just touched something unpleasant and said "Well, we were waiting for a lawyer to show up to represent Black Ice, but I guess you will have to do"  
  
As Xi'an snickered the tall man feigned drama. "Oh you wound me so Madame. I am indeed intending to be Master Jenkins's, legal representation regarding this matter. You super-hero types may be well and good at petty assault, but when the law is involved, you need someone who holds the really big guns, and that would be Me."  
  
"Well you're awful sure of yourself." Xi'an said, still snickering. Dani on the other hand was more serious with this strange newcomer.  
  
With a hand on her hip she said, "Do you really think you can help him?"   
  
Looking down at Dani through his glasses the man stiffened up and weighed his words. "I'm not sure. People are going to be pretty angry. But I do know that I'm going to try my best." He once again picked up his superior tone. "And among the people with the skills necessary to help this poor boy, I believe I am alone in saying that. There is one thing you can do for me, though." He reached down and picked up a small metal case. "I find that my clients find it very distracting that the first thing I do is put on a power dampener. I was wondering if I can get one of you to do that for me I would be most grateful."  
  
"I'll do it." Xi'an said. "I think Dani needs a break from the kid." She picked up the small case and motioned for him to take the lead. "Shall we?"  
  
"We shall, thank you my dear. After you of course." He made an exaggerated gesture for him to go first.  
  
Xi'an raised her eyebrows and looked at Dani. "And a gentleman too!" She smirked and went on her way. 'Maybe the world doesn't completely suck. Xi'an is letting her self have a little fun. Maybe I should do the same' she thought. The kids were sitting in the waiting room looking with rapt attention and blank expressions at the TV. 'I never thought I'd say this, but I'd swear TV is going to rot their brains.'  
  
She came up behind the group and trying to keep her mood light said "So, is there anything good on?" When no one answered she looked at the TV. CNN was on and there was aerial footage of a war zone of some sorts. Suddenly she was gripped with the horror of the scene when she saw the big Pink Blob Kid crawl out from under the wreckage. Breathlessly she said "That's,... That's,...."  
  
"Home!" Laurie blurted out and started crying uncontrollably.  
  
Nearby, David had found a bathroom and helped Josh off of his gurney. They stumbled into a stall and Josh slumped into the throne like a wet noodle. 'I hope that there are no security cameras.' He thought to himself. 'So much for Dani's request to keep this low key. Please be ok Josh.' Looking at Josh, David got the surprise of a lifetime. Josh's normally pasty white skin was kelly green. "Uh, Josh?" he said quietly and slapped the boy's green cheek.   
  
Josh flinched and opened his eyes. "Oh hey David." He looked around and said quietly as if he were telling a secret "You know, I don't feel well at all." His head tipped back and his color became a slightly more yellow shade of green.  
  
"Nice understatement." David said under his breath. "Ok, just stay here. I'll Get Dani."  
  
David turned around and left the stall as he heard a weak "ok" from behind him. Looking around, he found his way to the waiting room and the rest of the group.  
  
"This is horrible. I should have been there!" Dani said in stunned disbelief.  
  
David realized that he had stepped into something terrible. "What happened. You should have been where?"  
  
Sofia, who was holding Laurie's head and stroking her hair said, "It's all gone. Some one blew up the school." She numbly looked at the TV while Laurie continued to sob.  
  
"They lured me away! They,... no wait, that's not right. I was leaving anyway, they wanted to make sure that Xi'an and you kids came with me. Someone was afraid of one of you and when you left they were free to do this!!! How could I be so stupid!!!" Dani fumed at no one in particular.  
  
David butted in. "Wait a second, what do you mean we were lured away from the school?"  
  
Dani took a deep breath and said, "Ok, let me explain." She recounted to the group the conversation she had with Xavier in his office and how she had learned that her memory of it was altered by Esme to take not only herself but her charges and Xi'an and her charges, Cessily and Victor. "And I was just about to get you all on board the jet and head back to New York when Black Ice started zapping people. I knew we couldn't just leave. Now were stuck here." She looked him in the eye suddenly realizing "Where is Josh?!"  
  
"That's what I came to tell you, he's in the bathroom up the hall. Dani, he turned green!"  
  
Cessily said, deadpan, "He probably got a good whiff of his own feet." and finally cracked the first smile since realizing their home was a smoldering hole.  
  
Sofia could feel Laurie jerking from where she was sobbing and feared that even hearing about Josh again was making her sob even more. To her surprise Laurie came up laughing. "You noticed that too?" She snorted.  
  
"The boy has a problem." Cessily said back making all four of them fall out with roguish laughter.   
  
David blurted, "This is serious, he turned St Patrick's Day green all over after healing that clerk. He's totally out of it and as obvious a mutant as Night crawler or Victor.  
  
"Not everyone can look so good. At least my feet don't stink." Victor chimed in, soliciting a new round of laughter from the group.   
  
David looked at Dani who was still looking at the TV and laughing and crying at the same time. He knew what this was. They felt so terrible that they had to laugh at something. "Dani I think we need a diversion." Instantly the lights began to dim and all the monitors in the emergency ward went off.   
  
"Your good!" Sofia said to Dani.   
  
"Come on David, lets get Josh to the van, I'll show you where it is." Victor said. He noticed that Cessliy's image inducer was not working and said. "I think you aught to join us." he said pulling Cessily by the arm. Her arm deformed noticeably but she pulled it together and ran after David and Victor.  
  
Thinking ahead, David found a wheel chair and brought it with them.   
  
While David was talking to the group in the waiting room, Xi'an and their new Lawyer, Ed, were settling down to talk to Timmy Jenkins.   
  
"Now this won't hurt at all. Once the Dampener is in place the nurse will give you a shot to reverse some of the effects of the sedative." Xi'an told the boy. She was putting the device that looked like a vambrace on Timmy's fore arm. Once in place it lit up automatically and glowed slightly in orange and red.  
  
"You are one of the people who hurt me." Timmy said as the nurse gave him the stimulant to counteract the sedating drugs in his system.  
  
Xi'an examined the device on his arm as the amount of power it had to contain increased with Timmy's more alert state. "You'd like to think that wouldn't you, but actually I was trying to keep you from hurting others. Did you know that if your 'Ice' solidifies on a living human, you hurt them terribly?"  
  
"No" he said meekly "I didn't know that."  
  
"Well your friend and the clerk were hit with it and they would have been in coma's or worse had we not had a healer on our team. Did you know that your powers might have killed those people if Josh hadn't been there?" Xi'an was trying not to become emotional like Dani had become earlier.  
  
Timmy sat up in bed and looked at Ed and said "Sorry Josh, I thought it just made the ground really slippery."  
  
Ed came forward and said, "I'm sure Ms. Manh will pass that along to him. Actually I'm to be your representation in this little trouble you're in, if you will have me. Ed Legit," he said putting out his hand "And if Ms. Mcoy will give us a few moments I'd like to chat about what happened this morning."   
  
Timmy did not accept Ed's hand and instead, folded his arms. "The last person who wanted to 'Chat' with me about this morning was that Indian lady who said I had to plead guilty in order to get a lawyer." Timmy put on his best impersonation of Magneto and said, "Besides, I don't like filthy human lawyers"  
  
Ed looked back at Xi'an, who was close to the foot of the bed, then quickly looked at Timmy. Taking his sunglasses down to his nose he said "You know, I'm not too fond of filthy human lawyers ether." His eyes were completely transparent and seemed to suck in all light. They gave Timmy the uneasy feeling that he was being examined under a microscope. Ed put his glasses back on and continued. "So listen, if you don't want to talk, that's fine. But we already found something we have in common, and I believe that we have something else in common as well."  
  
"What's that?" Asked Timmy.  
  
Ed paced slightly and said "Well, we both have your best interest at heart. You see, not only am I required, as your representative, to provide you with a vigorous defense, but I believe that deep down you aren't the petty thug that these people think you are." He gestured to Xi'an.  
  
"Hey!" Xi'an exclaimed.  
  
"And I certainly believe that you aren't the rampaging Monster the State would have us believe you are. You might be a mixed up kid, and selfish, but nether of those are crimes. So what do you say? You want a pre-paid lawyer who wants to fight for you or some fresh out of law school Human public defender." He put out his hand to Timmy once again. This time Timmy took it and gave it a shake. "That's my boy. Ms. Manh, can you excuse us? You can tell your friends that this is now under control."  
  
Xi'an left the room with a "Hrmph!" She sat outside the room waiting for Ed to come out, as they had agreed. 'The nerve of that guy! We never said that we thought he was a bad kid. I'd have to admit though, he was pretty cool in there. That kid is a tough case.'  
  
Ed went to his brief case and opened it.  
  
"What do you have in there?" Timmy asked.  
  
Ed looked over his shoulder and said secretively "Ah! I have a secret mutant legal device, designed by Forge to extract the greatest amount of information possible from an interview!" He made a great show of producing his pocket tape recorder. "Just kidding. I want to make sure I get your side of the story completely correct. I used to just take notes, but I found that I'd be too busy with my penmanship and miss something. You don't mind do you?"   
  
"I guess not. So what is your power anyway? What's with the freaky eyes?" Timmy said. Before yesterday, he was the only mutant he had ever known and he was curious.  
  
Ed looked up thoughtfully and took off his glasses. His large black eyes were in contrast to the rest of his face and seemed to extend further than normal to ward the sides of his head. "Some mutants are able to teleport, fly, Read minds, etc,... I on the other hand, can see really really well. I also have the ultimate in photographic memory, so much so that I can look at a page now, and read it later. That bit was very handy in law school, let me tell you. Some would say I was cheated in the Mutant Lottery, but I would say that they aren't terribly observant. You see, I'm not much of a fighter type and my powers aren't terribly dangerous or threatening. Of course, I'm much more interested in your powers Timmy, because they do appear to have the capability to be both dangerous and threatening. Would you like to tell me about it?"  
  
"Uh sure. I noticed the other day that I can make the ground really slippery, I mean supper slippery with this ice stuff, and you can hardly see it once it's in place. It was like black ice so I thought that must be my mutant name, know what I mean?"  
  
"I can imagine, continue please."  
  
"Yah, well, I'd always been the looser at school and I figured that this was my compensation, my very own power which set me apart, you know? So I tried everything I could with it. I shot it on myself with it and I found I could keep an icy shell going indefinitely, and it was really cool. It, like made me Taller, and my voice became this booming hollow echo. I think my whole body became that ice stuff when I did it! All this got me thinking, what do I do with this? You know?"  
  
"Of course" Ed replied.  
  
"So I, uh, figured out that I could, like, rob a bank or something, and no one would know that it was me! They would blame some big guy! Hey, should I be telling you this?"  
  
"I'm the ONLY person you should be telling this to."   
  
"Ok, You know, I really don't want to go to jail. It's so unfair! I didn't mean to hurt anyone, I just wanted to be important." Timmy's eyes went down.  
  
Ed looked at him and said, "It's unfortunate, but I don't think we can avoid some sort of incarceration. With luck, we can get you out before18 and your record will be expunged. You don't seem to be refuting the events of what happened, and there are many eye witnesses including your accomplices. I'm not going to lie, I think you might spend some time in juvenile detention at least. We will do our best to make the sentence as light as possible."  
  
Timmy looked up at him with a tear in his eye. "That really sucks you know."  
  
"Yea, I know, but we will be with you through the whole thing to make sure your rights are protected I promise you." Suddenly the lights turned off and the room became pitch black. "Wow, must have had a power failure, good thing your dampener really is designed by Forge. Electricity it's self would have to stop working to take out that baby!"  
  
In the dark, a blue spark came from Timmy's bed, then a small shower of blue sparks. When the lights turned on, Ed was shocked. Black Ice was standing up on the bed with the remains of the power dampener in his hands. He boomed, "You have been nice to me, but I'm not going to jail, and your not going to stop me."  
  
Ed put up his hands and pleaded "Timmy, Listen to me, your making a big mistake. You will always be on the run. Think about the rest of your life, boy! Is that what you want?"  
  
"I'm not going to jail! He cried and threw the dampener at Ed, knocking him against the door with a loud thump. On the other side of the door, Karma heard the thump and was concerned. She went in to investigate but as soon as she turned the knob Black ice slammed the door outward off of it's hinges, throwing her out into the middle of the ward with the door on top of her. With a roar Black ice slicked up the entire floor and he slid toward the nearest exit he could find.   
  
Officer Ween and his partner lept up from their chairs, weapons drawn on the rampaging mutant as fast as human reflexes would allow. Black Ice was too fast for them though and he slid over behind a wall. The police gave pursuit but when they rounded the corner they slipped on the Ice patch Black Ice had laid for them. Looking where black ice had gone they saw a gurney, free of normal fiction and hurled by a desparated man bearing down on them.  
  
At the last possible moment, a gust of wind scooped the officers up and out of the way. They turned around to see Dani, Laurie and Sofia charging after them, also chasing Black Ice. "He went that way!" the officer said pointing down the hall. Sofia and Laurie ran after him but Laurie also slipped on the ice. Sofia was flying slightly above the ice on her winds and stopped only half way down when she realized that she was alone. She scooped up Laurie with a gust and the two of them made it into the parking lot. They looked around for Black Ice, but the warmer mid after noon was melting his ice too fast. The trail was gone. He had gotten away.  
  
Laurie shouted, "You should have gone after him! I'm just useless! What were you thinking?" She was upset and angry. Walking away from her friend she kicked at the sidewalk.  
  
"You are not worthless Laurie! You are my friend! Aren't you?" Sofia said in her thick accent.  
  
Laurie turned around quickly, making her hair fly all over the place. "If that's all the help I can be, just to be your friend while you kick tail, well, you might as well leave me at home because I'm just going to get hurt being Sancho Panza to your Don Quixote"  
  
Sofia was just confused. "Huh? Again, slowly and without the junk please."  
  
  
  
Laurie yelled out "I don't want to be your useless side kick!!!"  
  
"You think so? Why did I stop to get you just now?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"Because you were the only one who could bring down Black Ice Cube Boy without hurting him." She came closer to the blonde mutant girl and put her hand on her shoulder "That, plus you are my friend."  
  
Laurie once again hugged her friend and said, "Aw damn. I'm sorry. Today has just been too much for me."  
  
"Yes, today has really sucked wind." Sofia said and the two girls chuckled.  
  
May stood with earphones on watching Olive gear up for her routine. 'Olive thinks I'm rude, not participating fully in her practice, but that song gets stuck in my head something awful. Besides, making Olive happy is next to impossible.' She thought. Though they were teammates, she and Olive had come in first and second too many times to be anything but rivals.   
  
She looked at the other girl as she practiced. The extremely familiar song by Ministry provided focusing white noise via the headphones. Olive's technique was rock solid. Her jumps and tumbles and spins were a reflection of dedication to the sport, focused study and countless hours in the gym. Still, when May looked at her Co-Captains performance she noticed the same thing she had noticed all the years they had been together. She lacks the magic. It's indefinable, but it clearly wasn't there. Maybe it's how her hair did or didn't bounce. Maybe it's the smile that is to wide one minute and absent the next. Whatever it was, Olive managed to be technically perfect but remain uninspiring.   
  
'If I could give her the fire, we'd win every competition there is. Its so hard, though, when she hates me so.' May thought. The team normally had only one captain, but for the last year they have made them both Co-Captains because it was impossible to rate one girl over the other. May was happy with this but to Olive, it was a slap in the face.  
  
May snapped back into the present day and watched Olive do her last move, a series of tumbles ending in a twist flip. She did it with a machine like grace, bowed, then left the mat. Immediately she collapsed into a cushioned mat right off the exercise floor. Everyone who saw it ran to her but May was the closest and wound up being the first face Olive saw as she came around.  
  
"Oh hey May" she said groggily, then as her head cleared she said sharply "I'm ok, I just tripped. Let me up." May and everyone else watched the small brunette get up and walk to the trainer.  
  
Coach Green blew the whistle to break up the crowd. "Ok shows, over. May, your up."  
  
May gave herself a final couple of stretches and nodded to the girl with the boom box that had her music - Nickel Creek's 'This Side'. The happy sounding Mandolin and Guitar started the introduction and she went through the routine in her head. She started with quick flips and tumbles. By the time the song said "It's foreign on this side" She was starting to go through the required moves. "There's no place to hide and I'm nothing but scared." More flips and jumps. "You dream of colors that have never been made, you imagine songs that have never been played" Even in the middle of her routine she noticed that this describes the weirdness that has been happening lately. But here, she was happy, she could feel the fire, her edge. It made her smile.  
  
She was so excited that she closed off her mind to everything but her body and its motion through space. "Your first dawn blinded you left you cursing the day, entrance is crucial but it's not without pain - there's no pain!" She noticed that her persistent headache was gone. More twists! More jumps! Higher! Tumble faster! This was her joy in her sport. She reveled in it. She only vaguely heard the other girls gasp as the third crescendo of the song approached. "It's foreign on this side and I'll not see my home again, there's no place to hide but I don't think I'm scared!"  
  
Finally she came out of her revelry and looked at the ground 8 feet beneath her feet!!! She looked to see all the astonished faces of her teammates and coaches. She reached out to them and found that she could find definition of every shape in the gym, top, bottom, sides, mass, texture, all presented to her new eyes.   
  
The crowd looked up astonished as the ending refrain continued to play for the song and the gym was filled with the hushed tones of nervous girls and a slight soft tingling that sounded like wind chimes coming from the hovering girl. The blonde, hovering girl's eyes were clouded over and completely white which meant one thing to them - Mutant!  
  
May panicked. "Help!!!!" The onslaught of information from her new senses was overwhelming her mind and she couldn't figure out how to get down! After struggling for a moment, the darkness finally enveloped her and she passed out. Without her power to sustain her, the tiny girl's body came crashing down onto the mat.   
  
For long moments no one moved. The young blonde gymnast lay where she fell in the middle of the exercise floor, slowly bleeding from the mouth and slightly twitching.   
  
Olive and the Trainer Mr. Daivs came out of the office and surveyed the scene. "What are you all doing?" Olive shouted. "Someone help her! What happened?!" She ran to her teammate and said again "Someone help her!"  
  
To Be Continued. 


	6. Homes Part 1 of 2

Chapter 6 - Homes Part 1 of 2 - A matter of your point of view.  
  
AN- This is a reposting of this chapter after my friend Anton edited out some mistakes. The content of this chapter is the same but with less of the bumps that take the reader out of the moment. Thanks Anton!  
  
"To observe but not interfere" The calling and creed of an ancient race of beings known throughout the universe. Earth too has a silent sentinel, an all seeing godlike being sworn not to involve himself with the life of the planet he observes from his home on its moon.  
  
Uatu gazed down at the Earth with particular interest as night fell over the central United States. Nearby, a manhole cover continued to speed into space, propelled by the mutant girl who has captured his interest. He noted its velocity and size, and then gazed once more at the earth.  
  
Outside his sanctuary, moon dust settled in ever more compact arrangements, fueled by gravity. The master of this house sat in a chair he had patterned after the movement of quantum strings around a falling drop of water. It was a comfortable chair and Uatu was glad to have it. His observations of these dynamic humans have softened him to the creature comforts his kind usually considered benignly irrelevant. There was much to watch these days with New York being destroyed by a mad man, mutants constantly at war with each other and a single little girl poised to destroy the universe, unless she can master her vast power. The Watcher might as well have a seat he enjoys from which to watch events unfold.  
  
Jefferson City, Missouri.  
  
It was early morning and a large group conglomerated in the basement of an old house(,) near the state capitol buildings. The usual folding banquet tables full of political brochures and mailing lists were pushed to the side and the folding chairs have been arranged lecture style. Behind a simple podium(,) a large hand sewn banner was draped across the wall. The banner was familiar to all who came in to this room as the crest for the organization that they were all working for as volunteers, interns and organizers. The goals of this organization can be summed up in the one word that gave the organization its name: "Purity"  
  
As the clock shows 7:00 AM a man in his 30's with gray hair flanking his stark black hair above the ears comes to the podium. The people lingering around quickly hurry to their seats.  
  
"I'd like to thank you all for coming out so early. For those who are unaware, my name is Kendal Marks and we are leading humanity into a pure future. Now(,) I say we because we have to work together on this. Our foes, the mutated masses, grow every day and that is why I wanted to talk to you all this morning."  
  
He held up a newspaper with the headline 'Mayhem Mutant at Local High School.'  
  
"We have before us an example of the kind of thing we've been talking about. These secret mutants. Just yesterday, one of these secret mutants that lives among the students at a Springfield high school lost control of herself."  
  
After a pause he blurted out, "It's dangerous!"  
  
"Now(,) I feel sorry for the poor girl. I come to hear that she hurt herself and we can feel sorry for her and her family. But we can't forgive the lie that this poor unfortunate girl, well beyond puberty, has kept from the people that surround her. This lie is the big lie of the whole so-called 'mutant community'. It is the lie that they push out to the world when they deceive us into thinking that they are something that they no longer are. That they are human." His fist came down on the lectern stunning the enthralled crowd.  
  
"We know that these beings are dangerous and we also know that these people, as a group, have a vested interest in deceiving us. They try to convince us that mutants are not dangerous and they hide in plain sight, posing as human. Now I'd have to ask you this: is your neighbor a dangerous mutant? Can he or she start fires or read your mind or maybe even control magnetism?"  
  
At the mention of magnetism the spectre of Magneto and his fresh terrorist acts drifted across the room. "Don't you think you should know about it if your daughter's principal is a living breathing Chernobyl? What if you are in your car and some other driver turns to mist or light or steam or some other mutant ether and you are faced with a head on collision because their mutant power freaked out?"  
  
He waved his hand in the air. "I don't care what other people do in their private lives. I'd like to think of Jesus as living in my heart, but I am not so close to God as to question His motives for creating mutants. But I can and I will question the laws of man. I believe that the public has the right to know if individuals in the community have developed mutant powers and we have the technology to do just that."  
  
"This is what I believe and there are some people who believe that this is a violation of a citizen's right to privacy. I say someone else's privacy starts at the point when they can no longer affect me, which in the case of a mutant could well be anywhere on the planet. Still I understand that not everyone sees it that way. So we, in order to lead humanity into a pure and safe future, free from the taint and the danger of mutants and their deceitful cabal propose that there be 7 simple words on the application for a Missouri State driver's license. 'I do not carry the X Gene.'" He punctuated each word by motioning into the air as if he were spelling it out on a large sign.  
  
"If you can't or won't sign by those 7 words, this state will give you a different license. Pure and simple." He lingered on the word pure as if it were made of honey.  
  
"Now you can ask(,) why are we going to all this fuss for 7 words? Because the danger that these secret mutants pose is too great. The great state of Missouri will lead the nation. The 'Show Me' state will be the first state in the nation that will tell all the mutants out there 'Okay, Show Me!' Show me what you can do and who you are. Come out of the shadows. If you are a mutant only wanting peaceful co-existence then why do you hide anyway? Come out into the light of day and join in a community that knows who you are, what you are and what your talents are so that you and I can be safe from mutant mishaps."  
  
"I hear that some of those 'hero's' you hear about in New York say that with great power comes great responsibility. Well in our communities there is blossoming a great power in these mutants and we must act responsibly in order to harness that talent and keep it from becoming a travesty." He took a large pause and the room erupted into applause.  
  
Damping down the crowd noise with his hands he began to speak again. "Now I'm going to go to Springfield this very evening to discuss the situation with the local authorities and with the people directly. Inflammatory demagogues in Chicago and other parts of the nation have insinuated that Purity is out to hurt or even kill mutants. This is not true! The incident in Chicago was another example of secret mutants hiding among us and we were caught in the crossfire of their own secret wars. In working with the citizens of Springfield, I hope to show the world the healing power of Purity. Thank you very much"  
  
Once again, the room erupted in applause. Marks shook many hands as he made his way to the back of the room to get some coffee. Waiting for him there, stony and stoic(,) was a younger man in his twenties whose every move spoke of military precision. His face twitched slightly around the large scar that ran from his temple to his jaw as Marks came up to the table and poured himself some coffee.  
  
"You don't agree that going to Springfield is a good idea, do you, Bryant?" Marks said quietly, still pouring coffee into the Styrofoam cup.  
  
The younger man kept his eyes on the crowd. "You hired my firm to provide security. This operation requires me and my men to spread ourselves out. I don't enjoy being thin on personnel."  
  
Kendal took a short sip then shot "How much?"  
  
"Double" was the terse response.  
  
"Done." He straightened up and looked the man in the face. "This is important to the cause, Sergeant. I know I can count on your men to protect me from any mutant threat, but this is going to be different."  
  
The military man raised an eyebrow to Marks while still surveying the crowd. "Different may require me to pull in other resources. What is it that you have in mind?"  
  
"You must keep this new mutant from causing a danger to herself and others at her school while remaining inconspicuous. Sergeant Jean, I know that despite your mercenary attitude, you believe in our cause." He paused to shake the hand of a supporter and his mouth instantly twisted from his businesslike frown into a baby kissing smile. He took another sip of coffee and continued. "Now I'm going to talk to the principal of that school and try to convince him to let the mutant girl stay in school as a regular student. What we have here is a win win situation. If she manages to keep herself under control, she can be a poster child for the idea that the only safe mutant is a public mutant."  
  
"And if she doesn't?"  
  
"Well, that's why we have your men on call, Sergeant Jean. You can protect the human students by taking down this threat, that is if you can 'pull in other resources'. This would prove that mutants should be separated from real humans because it is just a matter of time before tragedy strikes. This girl is a fantastic pawn in the fight for public mutant identification, but in chess, the pawn is always the first one to go. So tell me, how much?"  
  
"Triple our current rate and you have your... protection."  
  
"And are these other resources available?"  
  
Sgt Jean finally cracked a smile. "I have the perfect package for this job, Mr. Marks. Just leave everything to me"  
  
Cleveland, Ohio  
  
"Push and Soma?" Sofia exclaimed again. She was reading the morning paper's coverage of the Black Ice attack. "My code name is PUSH? That's just dumb"  
  
Dani frowned at her through the newspaper. "I told you, I wanted to try to preserve your anonymity, especially since you haven't had the best of relations with the authorities yourself."  
  
"Well, at least when I was in trouble before, I didn't sound like I was a birthing coach! A name like that sticks, you know!"  
  
Xi'an, sipping coffee at the table, observed, "You know, her vocabulary just keeps getting more and more colorful." She, like Sofia, was the recipient of a frown.  
  
"You aren't helping. Shouldn't you be checking in on Victor and Cessily or something?"  
  
"Maybe, but this is more amusing. Actually I wanted to see the paper for anything on Xavier's." Xi'an quipped.  
  
Dani soften towards her friend "Oh, I'm so sorry. You must be sick about your siblings. How is the search going anyway? Any news?"  
  
Xi'an looked surprised. "Yea, oh I guess I forgot to tell you. Ed saw them in a picture. They are fine!! Apparently, he saw them playing with that big pink blob kid in one of the panoramic shots."  
  
Dani and Sofia both looked confused. "Wait a second, just like that? You asked him and he said he saw them? Just like that?"  
  
"So says the girl who can cast the illusion of someone's worst nightmare. Yes, Just like that. His power is quite ... unique." Dani smirked. "You like him! You're not thinking of batting for the other team are you?"  
  
"Oh, heavens no. Of course, I'd love anyone who found my brother and sister for me!! I just wish we weren't cut off from New York. I can't even get in touch with our telepaths!"  
  
Sofia chimed in "Yes, no one seems to be able to communicate with an area centered on New York City, including Westchester!"  
  
With a stumble, Laurie ungracefully dropped down the stairs and shuffled into the kitchen.  
  
"Soma! You're looking particularly perky this morning." Xi'an chirped.  
  
"Ermmmk..." burbled the blonde girl. The left side of her face displayed the strange wrinkled appearance of a bed sheet. Without really opening her eyes, she made her way by sense of smell to the coffee machine and poured a cup. They all watched as she took a sip and made an unhappy face, then shuffled back up the stairs.  
  
Xi'an puzzled, "What happened to her?"  
  
"She spent the night watching Josh." Sofia sighed. "Still no change. And she didn't like my suggestion that we place him in the sun."  
  
"I can't imagine why." Ed came in with grocery sacks and said, "Bagels, cereal, milk and pastries for the hungry combatants."  
  
"Thanks" Dani said. "Thanks a lot for putting us up for the night. Our hotel was not terribly understanding about us being mutants and I didn't even want to get into explaining Josh's condition"  
  
"Don't mention it, and how is Josh's condition, his apparent need for sunlight notwithstanding?"  
  
"Unchanged, I'm afraid." Dani volunteered. "I wish I could get a hold of Dr McCoy. Now that Dr. McTagert is gone, He's the one I trust most about mutant ailments."  
  
"Ah yes, the lovely and talented Dr. McTaggert." Ed said cutting a bagel in half. Though he now had on a gray turtleneck and black leather jacket, He still seemed stiff and aloof. "A true loss."  
  
Dani looked at him sternly "I hope you mean that respectfully."  
  
Ed looked up quickly and grinned. "Of course! The good doctor was one of the best. I saw her myself once. I was having headaches something serious, so I flew to Scotland and braved the seas all the way out to that middle of nowhere island to get an appointment. Know what she said?"  
  
"No, what?"  
  
He put his hands on his hips, looked very stern and said in his best Scottish accent, "'Get Yer self some sunglasses and free up a seat in my waiting room for somebody with a real problem!' Lovely woman, and highly competent."  
  
"Moira was a dear dear friend to us you know" Dani said darkly. The room seemed to dim ominously around Dani but it was hard to tell if it was a result of her power or the dark, cold stream of daggers coming out of her eyes.  
"No, I mean it. Headaches went clean away and the sunglasses were especially useful after my eyes... changed." The last word barely met the light of day.  
  
Sofia queried curiously, "Why? What's wrong with your eyes?" and looked intently at the lawyer's face.  
  
"Nothing much." Ed turned away from the scrutiny and smoothly recovered. "So Ms. Moonstar, do you have a next move?"  
  
"You really should call me Dani. And I'm trying to figure that out now."  
  
"Well, you might want to consult the paper. It seems your next stop is going to be a little rocky. A7. Center of the page." He tossed the bagel halves into the toaster from across the large kitchen and strolled over to push down the lever.  
  
The three young women seated at the breakfast bar all stared at Ed, then Sofia quickly shuffled the newspaper past the front page article about Black Ice. There, on page 7, was a large article about a girl in Missouri manifesting mutant powers.  
  
"I particularly like the pompous ass from Purity they interviewed for the story. Seems he's quite full of himself and his organization." Ed put on his best mocking southern drawl. "'We give eye tests for driver's licenses. How would we know if a person's mutation interferes with their driving or is otherwise a hazard to other folks.' Guy doesn't go on to mention how his bill would identify a mutant, even a latent one, to his neighbors. They'd be using the same mechanisms they use to inform the public that you are a pedophile."  
  
Dani looked up amazed "You're kidding me."  
  
"Wish I was. Makes me want to go download naked pictures of Avril Laviene. I might as well."  
  
Xi'an laughed "I do hope you can contain yourself on that one."  
  
Ed tossed the two toasted bagel halves in the air and with a foot long bread knife, sliced quickly 4 times. With a sweeping motion of a plate with his other hand, he captured the 8 perfectly symmetrical bagel pieces. There was no effort at all in the motion, but putting the plate down you could tell he was showing off. "Since you asked so nicely, my dear, I'll do my best to resist the temptation. Bagel?"  
  
"Xi'an's more the muffin type." Dani dismissed quickly, making Sofia stifle a snort of laughter. "You know, this is bad. They named her school and everything. At least it won't be hard to track her down."  
  
"Especially since she's been passed out since yesterday." Xi'an said, reading over her shoulder.  
  
Dani looked up in deep thought. "This is terrible. That poor girl is all alone out there and is totally exposed. I wonder..."  
  
Xi'an had seen this look on Dani's face before, usually before one of their adventures as the original New Mutants. "What? I don't like that look."  
  
"Well, ... the kids need a place to go to school and that girl will need some guidance. We can't exactly invite her to a place that has just been demolished. Ed, is there an Xcorp office near Springfield?"  
  
"I think they were going to start an office in St. Louis but it's just in the planning stages, so the closest would be Chicago. Honestly, you have more experience with these kinds of things than those guys. There just a bunch of lawyer types, like me."  
  
"Well than can you help us? I was thinking, why don't we try to enroll our kids in that girl's school?"  
  
Xi'an stood up in protest. "Dani that's crazy. These kids barely have control over themselves. Sofia, Laurie, Cessily and Victor have all had traumatic experiences in regular high schools and now you want to insert them into a high pressure situation like this? We should be trying to get that girl out of that media frenzy before it turns ugly."  
  
"You know, I am right here" Sofia mumbled, still reading the paper.  
  
"Look," Dani started trying to be patient, "The Mansion is just not an option anymore. I don't want the kids to be field agents, but they ARE high school students. Your kids have image inducers which will help them avoid the same problems they had before coming to Xavier's, and all of them have had training in how to keep there powers under control. Besides, what ELSE are we supposed to do? It's February! These kids need to be in school, learning something."  
  
The room fell quiet. Dani had a point, but so did Xi'an. In the silence, it was apparent that Dani's was the stronger plan. Ed broke the silence by cheerfully exclaiming, "I will see what I can do. And it occurs to me that you folks might need a hand in this little adventure, maybe a lawyer-type?"  
  
"No, but we could use someone with a car and access to the Xcorp bank account. Wanna go on a field trip?" Xi'an zinged playfully.  
  
Ed brushed aside the barb. "Sure, I'll go get a note from my mom."  
  
Everywhere  
  
May opened her mind. Songs of all kinds danced brutally on her nerves in an endless cacophony of wavelengths, colors and speeds from all angles. She was sure she was going mad. 'Ah! This is crazy. I must be dreaming. I've got no body, how can I be experiencing this? It's all too much!' She gave in to panic for as long as she had energy to spend, but the chaotic sensations she was feeling went on oblivious to her. She was helpless to do anything.  
  
'Ok, I'm freaking here, but that really isn't getting me anywhere. If I'm dreaming, I'll wake up and that will be that, but if I'm not... Think, girl. How did I get here?' She concentrated against the relentless attack on her nerves to work through the day. 'I got up, walked to school, skipped first period with Jannie at the Hell Café where every one was dropping stuff. That was really great for the headache I had. Then went to school, through the headache. Then, ... Oh my god! Gym practice! This is real! But if I'm crazy, wouldn't I think I'm Buddha or something? What's all this? And why is it so LOUD!?'  
  
Once again she panicked. It felt like an open nerve on fire in a way she'd never even imagined. Almost like looking at the sun with your skin on fire eating hot peppers and listening to punk rock full blast. All simultaneously. Thrashing franticly, she found that if she concentrated a certain way, the sensations banging on her consciousness for comprehension became less severe. She did this until she could bear it, but the feelings were still very alien and very much jumbled.  
  
She used her musician's ear and tried to examine just one pattern in the cacophony. The realization slowly overcame May that this was not chaos at all, but is highly structured and highly complex. The more she focused on one part of the symphony, the easier it was to predict the part that it was about to play and easier still to tune out the rest of the orchestra around it.  
  
The more time passed, the less sure May was that she was really anywhere at all. Maybe she had really gone crazy from the pain and this is all that was left. Regardless and with nothing else to do, she sat with her sense of self, examining pieces of the cacophony. It had been helpful to think of these things as sounds but that was wrong. They didn't sing. They vibrated in a voice that had many different properties. Part of the song seemed to suggest motion and the way that the parts played off one another implied interaction. Plus, it was like she could see these things fill up a completely full space and still see all sides of all things. It was as if the world had at least two distinct representations that stood for the same thing. These two parts of her universe were irreconcilable but she knew that they were telling her the same thing. And if she could find how these interrelated, she might find a way to overcome her madness. Her doubts about her own physicality came from this image of the space she was observing. Though everything in this space was laid bare for her to experience, there was no HER there.  
  
Time blurred by without much meaning as May examined this new universe with her raw senses. Every once in a while she caught a glimpse of something useful, almost familiar, but it would be drown in the noise and blur. Frustration would set in from time to time and she'd imagine that if she had fists that she would bang them on a desk, but there were no hands and no desk. There was only the puzzle of a world.  
  
The longer she sat in this world the more comfortable she was with its sounds and shapes and colors. Initially what grated on her brain became more common to her as if her new sense of the world was changing her, or that she was changing herself. The later was probably more accurate and she allowed herself that victory. 'This world didn't change in its intensity. I am learning to cope with it. I've just got to hope that I can figure out what all this means.'  
  
Laurie made her way up the stairs with her coffee. 'Ed has such a nice place here, and so big! It really doesn't seem like his at all though. So many rooms!' She yawned. 'I'm so tired. I must have fallen asleep funny. My back hurts. If Josh were better he'd fix it right away. Josh. He's in trouble himself for trying to help others. I, ... I just don't know what I would do if he's really hurt.'  
  
She came to the room where Josh was resting. He looked horrible, truly green and at the sight Laurie could only shake her head. Taking a big sip of coffee, she sat down in her chair at Josh's bedside. "Josh?" She whispered. His hand was green as slime but she took it. "Josh I don't know if you can hear me, but I've got to tell you something." Josh never stirred which made Laurie bolder. "You are,... Special to me. I don't think I can explain it, but I,... I just feel better about me when you are around and that makes me want to be around you." She looked at his green sleeping face. "Just please get better. Please? I know you can do it. I don't want to think of my world without you." Head bowed, she started to sob.  
  
Slowly, a barely detectable cloud of chemical agents emanated from Laurie. She was unaware that her power was becoming so active in the small guest bedroom. Her lack of sleep had dropped her guard and her emotions were all over the place. The power sorted out the young mutant's conflicted feelings and sent forward matching pheromones. There was a whiff of sadness combined with self-pity. However, these were undercurrents to the main message being projected. Hope and faith - faith in her teammate and hope for the future - combined to make up the body of the pheromone cloud that now stirred around Laurie and the sick, sleeping Josh.  
  
The chemical agents of the pheromones unfurled themselves in Josh, giving the young mutant hope for his recovery and faith in his own abilities. Naturally cocky, the young man woke slightly and pressed his mutant powers to heal the mysterious affliction that had taken over his body. He succeeded in clearing the weariness from parts of his face and neck. He breathed in deep and became even more certain of his restoration to full health. The power in his body found a conduit in these unblemished regions around his face and spread out from there like a spiders web, healing his body as they went. Healing power fanned out across his body and seeped into his every pore. As he found himself emerging from his long night, he saw Laurie sobbing on his hand and was at a loss for what to say. "Um, Laurie?" He started gently.  
  
Laurie was convinced she was just hearing things until she felt Josh's hand move. "Hi!" She said meekly, sitting back and pulling her hair back behind her ear. "How long have you been up?" She looked horrible and cute at the same time with her face a mix of tears and smiles.  
  
"Just got up now. What time is it? Why are you here?"  
  
"Oh Josh," she gushed, "You had us all so worried!" She got up and gave him a big hug.  
  
Josh was uncomfortable with this sudden outpouring of emotion. The last he remembered he was with David in a bathroom. "Um, I'm happy to see you to." He said slowly. "Where are the others? Where am I?" He repeated.  
  
Laurie just kept hugging him "You're back."  
  
In the world of her mind, May labored over each task for days and weeks on end, though she suspected that this couldn't really be so. Wouldn't she get hungry? After a particularly fruitless span examining a wriggling string like structure she started to take a different tack. 'Ok, this must have something to do with my Gym practice. When I ended the routine, I was,... Flying? But that makes no sense! Then there was this, weird overload thing where I could see the gym in stereo or something. Wait! I had that before! The manhole cover, and again in the drop your plate diner! Each time it was stronger than before. What if this is that same feeling stronger still? I can't believe I'm saying this to myself, but on the list of things that I can't believe are happening, this one is at least believable.'  
  
In the forefront of her mind May brought up her recollection of that moment in the gym. She thought that she was seeing things from all sides, but thinking about it, she actually saw a thing as one. What she sensed were things as complete 3 dimensional objects, but there was more. They had other properties that just came over as noise to her. Could it be that there was too much information here to make sense of? 'Maybe this is like learning a new instrument. At first you have to concentrate on each note, but once you have the mechanics of how to play, you can then work on scales, arpeggios, chords, etc. There has to be a basic form here.'  
  
She sighed a long mental sigh at all the work she had put in over what had seemed like months without pause. 'Oh, why did this happen to me? Was it those mutants Jannie talked about that last morning in the diner? It seems so long ago. A lifetime ago! Did they do something to me? Or maybe, ...' She would have gasped if she had been able to. 'Maybe I'm the mutant! Could this be my power?' She suddenly slumped into a grump 'Crappy power if you ask me. Why couldn't I just be strong or something? I still don't understand what THIS is!' She inadvertently reached out with her power and smacked one of the string-like structures. This caused a multiplying and expanding ripple effect all around her. New patterns shot through as yet unnoticed matrices of blobs, strings and sounds. The ripples never went away but were eventually incorporated into the other structures that already existed.  
  
'Well THAT was new!' She thought. 'I'd better not do that again until I know what I'm looking at. For all I know, this is someone's brain, or worse, my own!'  
  
Her perceptions continued to take shape and meaning. Trapped in an unending realm where time has no real meaning, she labored on the problem constantly. Sometimes she just listened and observed. Sometimes she actively tried to focus on little pieces and some times she imagined that she could see shapes and patterns, real things from the reality that she had been familiar with her entire life up until yesterday.  
  
All this happened behind the open, completely white eyes that Ted Armstrong now looked into. May's bedroom was much the same as it had been the previous night when he had waited for her in a pile of stuffed animals, but everything about their world had changed. He kissed his daughter on the forehead and pushed her eyelids down over her stark white eyes. He knew that they wouldn't stay that way, but the doctors said that she was blinking enough so that wasn't a problem. He did it because looking at her eyes and hearing the twinkling notes that signaled her power drove home that his daughter was now a mutant. And things were never going to be the same again.  
  
To be continued... 


	7. Homes Part 2 of 2

Chapter 7 Homes Part 2 of 2 - It's the journey that matters.  
  
Springfield  
  
As Ted Armstrong looked at his sleeping daughter, he began to worry. The future of any young girl is uncertain, but a young Mutant girl will have an even harder road to travel. 'I wish I could talk to her about it, really. It's not like we don't have our disagreements or anything, but we could always talk about her plans,... our plans. But this coma like thing,... the Doctors don't have a clue, really, aside from her not being seriously hurt. Lord, I don't know if I'm strong enough for this. I'm sorry, but I really don't.'  
  
The faint ring of chimes started once again, and once again things in the room seemed to float where they stood. Ted's hair stood up, and his clothes drifted but he seemed to be the only thing in the room with any weight. It was eerie but at the same time, kind of peaceful.   
  
The tiny feet of Dottie Armstrong padded their way down the hall to her daughter's room. As she walked, you could tell where May got her physique. An adult of four foot five inches is unusual at best but to be still perfectly proportioned is another thing entirely. While May was shorter but more muscular and athletic, her mother was simply a tiny doll of a woman. "Teddy? I made some coffee." She said in a sing-song voice as she opened the door.  
  
Crossing the threshold her smile beamed and her cropped blonde hair stood on end. The coffee that she was holding seemed to be tired of it's cup and started to look around for better places to be.  
  
Ted looked at his wife's childlike glee. "It's really something isn't it honey?" He said trying to coral the coffee. The worry he felt just moments ago was erased by his wife's smile.  
  
"Beautiful! It's such a pretty sound." She said. "Oh Teddy, our daughter shines so bright!" Her smile and glowing blue eyes made Ted fall in love again. He knew his wife was,...Special. A little simple and hard to understand some times, but all he had to do was look at her and he knew everything would be all right. Even now, when things were so far beyond anything they had ever thought of experiencing, he knew that they could see it through.  
  
The couple hugged and watched the room float. Ted finally figured out how to drink his coffee before the effect passed once again and the family was left in the mid morning silence.   
  
Missouri  
  
The air was cool and crisp on a bright winter day. Undisturbed skiffs of snow covered the grassy landscape off of interstate 44 as a group of travelers make their way west in a caravan of Dodge Durangos. The second car was black like the others. But, while the other cars were occupied by hired help, this one held a more unlikely pair.  
  
"Why of course, Mayor!" Kendal Marks exclaimed at the cell phone in his usual upbeat only faintly southern drawl. "Sure. I'm sure we can work something out, sir." "No there will be no trouble from me, I can assure you." "Uh Hu. Well, we'd really like to be able to set up in the Bass Pro parking lot, but of course, we'd have to get permission from them first." He paused and nodded to Sgt Jean, who was driving. "Well, I'd really appreciate it sir. And to you too. Uh huh. Ok, Bye!" He hung up and looked at Sgt Jean. "Well, I've just about got our venue for a public rally. The advance staff have called up everyone they could to work the local areas to get a good turn out."  
  
"You could get the parking lot?" The stiff man at the wheel asked not turning his head.  
  
The scar on his right side seemed to cover most of his face and crawl under his short cut hair from Kendal's perspective. He wondered again where it might have come from. "Yes. Seems the Mayor can help us out with that location. We just have to be polite. Not that much of a hardship for the ideal location wouldn't you say?"  
  
"Not a hardship, No Mr. Marks. If you'll excuse me, I have to check with my men." He pulled a cell phone out of his shirt pocket and put the hands free over his ear.  
  
"No, of course not." Kendal replied reaching for a notepad under his seat. The Sergeant pressed a button on the phone and began talking.  
  
"Chase two reporting green. What's the status?"  
  
From the phone he could hear "Cat one green." "Dog three green."   
  
"Dog three, any word on Malroy?"  
  
The phone crackled "The package is inbound." He put the phone back into his pocket slowly.  
  
"Anything wrong, Sergeant?" Kendal asked.  
  
The stiff young man announced, "Far from it. Your requested security force is now on line Sir."  
  
"Good work! Excellent job!" Kendal Marks continued to work on his speech while Sgt Jean cracked a lopsided smile on the undamaged side of his face.  
  
May continued to experiment and was making progress. She noticed that certain structures and sounds had a type of direction to them and that as she followed the direction things ether became more congested and loud or more free and quiet. At the same time she realized that she could get a better impression of something if she purposefully ignored some of the sensations emanating from it. Not really seeing or hearing but sensing, time blurred past without sleep and without end. Thoughts of family and home raced through her consciousness without emotion. The desire to return to her normal life was in her mind, though, and it spurred her on to make sense of this strange world around her. She was getting an idea of what can make her perceptions more clear and as she did she noticed something about the scale of things. 'It's weird.' She thought, 'I can examine something, then look at it's components, and so on into a seeming infinity. Thank god I had calculus or this would make my head hurt!'  
  
An idea rushed through her head like a tidal wave. 'Calculus! Does any of this survive that kind of analysis? All along this stuff seemed at least a little familiar but now that I can filter out some of the noise, some stuff is starting to show some definable properties.' As she looked around she found that she could do seemingly impossible math calculations in her head and found real relationships between inhabitants of this world. 'I must be looking at a physical space here. I long ago noticed that this isn't chaos, but this is one step further. And the relationship between the strength of the sensations as I go along one of these scale independent lines is geometric. I wonder if there are other aspects to this.' She let her focus blur and noticed that she could get a much larger yet less detailed picture, like zooming out of a tight shot with a telephoto lens. Pushing this technique to its limit, she backed way away from the center of her focus and found larger patterns that she had previously missed. A sudden revelation shot across her consciousness like a lightning blot and startled her. 'Oh my! Now that I've backed way far away, this looks like the solar system! All of it!'  
  
30,000 feet  
  
Cessily was extremely self-conscious. The image inducer on her wrist made her feel like she had a bag over her head.   
  
Xi'an checked on her, quietly looking around the back of her seat. "How are you doing? You look...great."  
  
The redheaded girl scrunched up her nose and leaned forward to whisper. "You mean I look human. I feel like everyone is staring. Like everyone KNOWS. You look so normal, Xi'an, you have no idea." She went back into her seat and looked around. No one was looking anywhere near her but she felt like she had a spotlight on her and she was wearing underwear.  
  
"You are going to have to get used to this. Or others will have to, one of the two." Xi'an, playing mentor softly chided. "Besides, you should ask Dani about my 'weight problem' when we were New Mutants. I know exactly how you feel. For you, though, you will have to make your own journey to accepting your self." She paused for a moment. "Do you think it would be easier for you if I controlled you in the airport? I could make sure you don't slip up or something"  
  
"No, No I'll be fine. Thanks. I don't know what would make me more uncomfortable actually. I just don't understand why we are all going on this trip. Can't Dani just handle this on her own?" She crossed her arms in a grump.  
  
"Sure, but you know the situation, we just don't know what's happening at the mansion anymore since all news from the region has been blacked out. I'm guessing it's not terribly safe so going back home is not an option. Still, you need to be in school and there is a kid in Springfield who is about to face the same problems that you are talking about. The problem of being alone, isolated and different. A target for any bigot who comes along." Xi'an looked at her questioningly "Don't you want to help?"  
  
The young mutant girl avoided eye contact with her advisor. "It's not like I DON'T want to help, it's just that," She sighed. "I just didn't have that good a time in human high school once my," The young girl stopped, looked around quickly and leaning forward, she started to whisper "...once my body changed. I don't want to go back. People stare. People suck!"  
  
"And you would have this girl go through the exact same thing you went through, alone and without help?" Xi'an coaxed. The expression on Cessily's face slowly twisted as her mind went in circles about how she felt about this. "I didn't think so. Look, Dani and I are the ones working with our new contact. You concentrate on school and learning something. Remember, we have no idea how long we are going to be here and I have promised you, your family and Professor X that you will get a good education, even through the odd explosion. Maybe you will find that humans don't all 'suck' as you so delicately put it. Who knows, maybe you might like this new girl, or maybe not. We're not forcing you all to be friends with her, but given a choice, I'd hope that you could at least be sympathetic and help her through this rough time. When we recruited you, the school was set up and waiting to take you at a moments notice. Though it breaks my heart, the school just isn't as inviting today as it once was so we will have to improvise."  
  
Cessily shook her head. "The school was the first place I found after my change that I felt at home and now it's gone. I'm sorry, but I can't say that signing up for a potentially long-term stay in a human high school isn't making me feel any better about loosing that home. So you'll have to excuse me if I'm not totally excited about this mission"  
  
"You are an exchange student now, not someone on a mission. Do try to remember. I respect that you're not thrilled, but this is going to have to do." Xi'an smiled at her charge. "None of us are totally comfortable with this situation, but this is the best we could come up with. I'm sure you're up to the challenge." She tried to reassure her charge with a friendly look, but Cessily was only half buying it. "Look, I sympathize with what you're going through, I really do, but it doesn't change facts so you will have to learn to deal with it. And it's totally understandable that what happened to the school has you down. You're only human."  
  
From their seats a little further up, David and Josh looked back at the rest of the team.   
  
"Is it just me," Josh Said "or is there a serious GirlPower vibe going on with our current team?"  
  
David concentrated and continued to scribble into his notebook "Just you."   
  
Josh looked at the notebook. Usually David just wrote stuff neatly but here he had drawings going all over the place. "Whatcha doing?"  
  
David looked up. "I'm trying to concentrate. It's not easy."  
  
"Dude," the blonde haired mutant said under his breath "I thought we weren't supposed to let on that we had any powers while we were in public"  
  
"No one would know that I had powers at all 'Dude' if you kept your mouth shut." He sighed, "Ok, I'm trying to learn how to fly a plane."  
  
Josh sat up "Really?"  
  
"Yes really. There is an aerospace engineer three rows up who is afraid of flying and he's thinking all about this plane"  
  
"I thought you couldn't read minds"  
  
"I can't. He's got this model of plane memorized! I'm also taping into the flight crew for their experience." He said becoming quiet once more and continuing to scribble.  
  
Josh looked around the airplane. 'It's not like I'm not happy to be feeling better after Cleveland and Black Ice but I wish I had a clue about what happened. And what was all that with Laurie?' He looked at David and thought. 'He looks kinda busy, but I have all these questions. No matter how annoying his uptightness can be I still want to ask him questions because he seems to have answers most of the time.' "Hey David?" He squeaked.  
  
"What!" David grumped, still writing.  
  
"When I woke up Laurie was, like, crying and sobbing all over me and when she realized that I was awake, she nearly smothered me with a hug. You have any idea what that was about?"  
  
David looked at him and said, "Maybe she likes you, though I honestly believed that she had more taste than that."  
  
"Very funny." Josh snapped. "So, like, what am I supposed to do with that?"   
  
David flipped the page and absent-mindedly started to scribble as he talked to his roommate. He was surprised that Josh was talking to him about this. 'This must be difficult for him to talk to me about this.' He thought, and gave the blonde haired boy the best answer he could. "Everyone's experience with this seems to be different. Some people like you have skills in handling women, but I don't think that is a particularly romantic notion or anything that will really help you in the long term. Without getting too far into it, which is someplace I really don't want to go honestly, I'd say that where you go from here depends entirely on how you feel about her." David flipped the page again and continued to scribble.  
  
"But, that's just it! How in the world am I supposed to know if I feel anything about her? When I woke up for a while I felt like I was ready to take on the world and I think it was her doing. I mean, I like her and all, and she's really pretty, but she's not like the girls I picked up on before,..."  
  
"Before you came to Xaviers" David said, trying to work around the word 'Reaver.'  
  
"Exactly, I mean I talked a much better game than I really played, but still, I never had to hunt for dates and honestly, I was just, you know, playing around,.. having fun,..." he said with sudden frankness, "those girls never really meant anything to me."  
  
"And Laurie does?" David raised an eyebrow.  
  
Josh blushed. "At the very least, we are, I don't know, team mates. You saw how we took apart Black Ice. That has got to be par for the course for mutants. Laurie has our back and we have hers. It wasn't like that with the girls I'd pick up at my old high school. I never relied on them for anything. I just wanted,... uh,..."  
  
David let him dig a hole for himself then said "Companionship?" to let him off the hook.  
  
Snapping his fingers, the blonde mutant sighed, "Exactly! Companionship."  
  
David was surprised by the amount of maturity and honesty in the statements by his roommate. While he viewed him in this new light, it was still amusing to watch him squirm in his seat while bearing his past. "Point taken, so what are you going to?"  
  
"Well, I guess I'm going to spend some time soul searching while I'm not around her because I don't think I can trust myself fully while I'm with... Good god! What are you writing!" Josh exclaimed.  
  
David looked down at what his hand had scribbled while he was talking to Josh. "Apparently someone on the plane has the skill to write while doing something else entirely. And that is NOT their only skill. Look at this. This is an address in Springfield for someone named Armstrong. Next we have a floor plan of the high school with field of vision cones and microphone locations. And on the next page,..."  
  
He flipped the page and what he saw chilled both of them. It was like a page out of an anatomy book of a person's back, free of skin and some muscle pointing out nervous spots. Highlighted as well were some proposed mutant power spots in the spine, neck and most disturbing in a partially cross sectioned skull and brain. Wordlessly they flipped the page again. On one page were various lists of numbers and on the facing page was an all too familiar crest. The crest you find on purity banners.  
  
Josh stared at David who looked back stunned. "I'll go get Dani." He whispered.  
  
"Yea" David said, then added "and quietly."  
  
'Wahoooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!' The essence of Lucinda May Armstrong zoomed around the beautiful multicolored cloud bands of Saturn. The hum of the planet as a whole sang its song through those clouds as the rings of the planet counterbalanced in celestial harmony. She reached out and made a tiny flick at the cloud tops, making a tiny streak on the giant planet. 'This is so COOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLL!' She beamed to herself. 'But why? What am I really doing here?'  
  
She looked at the streak she just made and realized that it was rippling outward from her original mark. It didn't just reach out like a boat's wake, but it went up and in as well, and seemed to bend into some other dimensions not normally seen. The action was very fast in comparison to the speed at which things appeared to move on Saturn. She thought of the first time she had lashed out with this element of her being and how the reverberations went on and on. 'I think I had better be much more careful about that.' She looked as the disturbances on the cloud tops of the gas giant dissipated and then re-examined the planet. She changed her perspective so that she could sense very fine details in the planets atmosphere. And there she saw it. There was a ridge of low density in the cloud tops, as if something had tugged at the planet. 'It looks like something pulled on the planet's surface. Am I manipulating gravity? Is that what this is? If I can sense gravitational forces then this twilight zone world is starting to make sense. That's why I can see around corners. So what is going on that I'm out in space? And why does time seem to be so quirky? I've been out here for months. Why haven't I woken up or died? Maybe I did die. Who knows, now that I'm a mutant, they seem to die all the time. That doesn't feel right though, and there is still a fantastic amount of noise and stuff I don't understand coming off of these objects, but at least now I know what they are,... And what I can do with them.'  
  
On the road to Springfield  
  
Ed hated this car. At Laurie's insistence, they rented a convertible. Now 8 hours into the drive, his thoughts turned rather dark. 'I'm officially freezing my ass off. I understand the utility and all that, but these ragtops just don't keep the heat in at highway speeds. And on a totally unrelated point, what have I gotten myself into?'  
  
From the front seat, Victor played his Gameboy. 'I wonder if it is possible for them to make that thing any more obnoxious?' "Say, Victor,... Now that the teachers aren't here, tell me, how do you like Xaviers?" He wasn't really that curious, he just wanted to get Victor to stop playing for a while.  
  
It worked. The Green spikey headed mutant boy paused the game and came up with an answer that suprized Ed. "It's ok, but I really would rather go home if I could."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yea," the boy continued, "My classmates were actually not all that freaked out about me changing, but the parents threw a total fit, so they kicked me out." He sounded detached as if he was revisiting it in his mind. "I had friends back there, you know?"  
  
Ed hadn't wanted to make Victor feel bad so he tried to lighten the subject. "I'm sure it wasn't as bad as all that. It's not like people were going to come after you with pitchforks and torches or anything."  
  
"No, not really, but once my plates came in and people noticing was unavoidable, everything changed. People changed, situations changed, everything! Some of my friends wouldn't hang out with me while other kids suddenly wanted to hang out with me. The girl situation went into the toilet, but that wasn't that great to begin with." He smiled. "It was cool to be in the school paper for a while, but it was for all the wrong reasons and eventually they expelled me saying that they didn't have the resources to assure my safety."  
  
Ed looked at him sideways over the large collar of his overcoat and raised his left eyebrow inquisitively. "What was wrong with your safety?"  
  
Victor shrugged, "I heard that the school got a death threat. Or more accurately, I got a death threat that they sent to the school."   
  
The lawyer in Ed became in sensed, "That's not right. This is exactly like Brown Vs. The Board of Education. They should have had state police on call if they had concerns but you had every right to be at that school!"  
  
The boy in the passengers seat shrugged again, "I guess when Martin Luther King had a dream, he didn't dream about freaky looking kids with 30 Foot long tongues, or at the very least he brushed off those dreams as bad pastrami. So how about you? Why are you working for X-corp?"  
  
"I'm working for X-corp because you got kicked out of your school. The gross misapplication of the law where mutants are concerned is just appalling and continues every day. So, I got the best lawyer in town and put him on the case. Me."  
  
"Didn't that,... I don't know,... mess up your carrier or something?"  
  
"Truth to tell, I was already feeling pretty screwed at the time." Ed said mostly to himself "But I'll tell you kid, sometimes life gives you a choice. I could have sat this one out and said that it's not my argument but then every evening I'd have to sit with myself and live with the idea. The idea that I'd rather subsist in quiet desperation, amidst all that is, for me, meaningless and hollow, then suck it up and do what was right."  
  
Victor nodded "That's cool. So, what's your power? Sofia mentioned that you had something, but didn't know what it was."  
  
"Well, you don't have to have a power to be interested in mutant rights, but it's true that I have a little something. I can see really well."  
  
Victor laughed, "Is that it? And I thought my power was useless!"   
  
"So she left you?" Laurie said sleepily from the back seat. The two in the front thought the blonde girl was still sleeping but she had actually been listening to them all this time.  
  
Ed lifted his head to look in the rear view mirror. He still had on his smile and his light-hearted voice, but you could tell he was no longer amused. "Excuse me?"  
  
While still looking at the headlights passing she said absently, "She left you because you are a mutant and you worked for X-corp didn't she? The lady, with the nice curtains and the guest bedrooms. Your house didn't seem like you. It wasn't, was it."  
  
"You have quite the keen eye, my young friend." Ed said with a hint of resignation. "Carrie. My Wife's name is Carrie. Ex wife, to be more precise."   
  
From the front seat Victor said, "Oh dude, I'm sorry to hear that."  
  
With a verbal shrug, Ed speculated, "Well, that's another one of those things life gives you. Every once in a while, life gives you a shit sandwich." It reminded Laurie of a used car salesman loosing a pitch on a used car.  
  
She felt bad for Ed. His wasn't the first home she saw where the person missing made more of an impression than the people who still lived there. It reminded her of the house she grew up in and her father, who was a commanding presence by his absence. "So do you want to tell us about it? You probably already know all our traumas. Feel like sharing?"  
  
"Not really." He quipped. He saw her face in the rear view mirror and realized her genuine interest. "But, since you asked so nicely,... I knew I should have told her, but it never came up. After our third aniversery at 31, a secondary mutation occurred. I was now extending my visual range beyond what my eye sockets could handle or what normal people could sense. My entire eye became one big viewing surface and my retina beefed up to take in the new information to the point where my eye was being pushed out of my head. Thankfully my skull around my eyes slowly began to accommodate the new structures so the headaches started to go away and I became the good looking fellow you see before you." He grinned so wide his molars shined by the dashboard lights.  
  
"And Carrie didn't take it well?" Victor asked.  
  
"Actually she tried. A lot of people tried. My work tried to turn a blind eye to my 'problem.' I was a defense attorney, you see, and a good one. But, I found that I was being assigned to more and more mutant crimes. I had my share of scumbags, but mostly I found that these were just people caught in the system. While I could relate and I didn't mind the work, it wasn't anywhere as prestigious as the Tax and corporate crime cases I was used to doing. Then X-corp opened up shop in Cleveland and I followed the niche to the new big dog in town."  
  
The car continued to hum and filled the silence. Laurie asked the question Ed was evading. "What about Carrie?"  
  
"She devorced my ass for being a lying bastard, and she was totally right." Ed was unnaturally still and bitter, not at all his usual loose rehearsed self. A cold wet bucket of ice water was thrown on the conversation and the car fell into the silence of the road. Victor turned his game boy on and Ed found himself happy for the distracting noise.  
  
Braaaaacccccckkkkkkang! Two small specks of dust smacked into each other in a shower of color and sound in the Ort Cloud at the very outer reaches of the solar system. It was like playing marbles to May Armstrong. 'Ok, I think I have the hang of this. Orbits take a little practice because they set up Lagrange eddies, and I'll just have to deal with that. I think time is impossibly slow while I'm looking at this stuff, which is probably good. I have a hard enough time dealing with all the sensory input as it is! I'd hate to have it come in in real time. Maybe that's what gave me the headaches. Well, I can't stay like this. I think I've got control enough. I want to go and get my life back.' With but a thought of the normalcy of home, the focused totality of the young mutant girls powers dashed off to find herself.  
  
Springfield Airport  
  
David looked anxiously around at baggage claim. He searched every face for any trace of the cruel calculated butchery he knew someone was capable of. More than that, he tried to find the murderous skills within himself as a result of standing next to this clearly deranged lunatic.   
  
He canvassed the crowd until every bag was retrieved and only a few people beyond those in his party remained at the baggage carrousel. Cessily, still disguised by her image inducer came up to him and slowly slid her hand onto his shoulder. "Come on big guy, let's go."  
  
"But Cess, he had to have been on that fight. You don't understand..." He protested under his breath.  
  
She looked into his dark brown complexion. He had a determination that she admired but she had to disagree with him. "I do understand, but he's gone. He slipped past us and honestly,... that's probably a good thing. Saved us from a scene in the airport. No one blames you David."  
  
But David lost no urgency in her reassuring words, though he spoke in a whisper. "That's not what I meant. I WAS him for a bit and he was creepy and dangerous. I thought that cop in Cleveland was trained to be a mutant killer, but THIS guy,... This guy clearly had some practice. It can't be a coincidence that he's here now."  
  
"But he's not HERE now David. We're all tired and Victor and Laurie will be arriving soon, I'm sure. Let's give it a rest. Did you figure out anything else about this guy, by the way?"  
  
David got icy cold. "I only figured it out because he used to practice carving it on things,... Trees, Bodies. 'Malroy was here.' I think his name is Malroy."   
  
Not far away, in the Armstrong home, the contents of May's bedroom began to shift. The strange overtones of chimes became unmistakable as the natural mechanisms of gravity and inertia were overcome via unintentional mutant interference. May had found her center and now, after what seemed to her like lifetimes of discovering, learning, and searching, she had finally found her body. Now all she had to do was find a way back into it.  
  
She tried focusing on her own head but only found the mush of her brains. 'ewwww!' She thought. Overcoming her revulsion, she moved about her body, examining the gravitational tug of her left hand on her right and every other interaction she could find. What seemed like months for her she knew were only minutes to the real world. Her own real self was right there before her. She could move that body as a puppet if she wished, though that would surely damage her. Maybe that was all there was to do. Maybe she had come home to destroy her own biological host so that she was no longer trapped on this plane. Maybe she WAS a ghost.  
  
'But a ghost wouldn't have seen what I've seen. I made waves in Saturn's atmosphere and threw rocks at each other in the ort cloud. I've surely gone further out into space than any human,... MUTANT, I keep forgetting, has ever gone. I mastered this power. That's what it is. I'm sure of it. What is it that I haven't tried in all these years?' She looked around the room for a clue. She looked at the barely visible face of her father and mother. She looked at her trophies and her instruments. She looked at her books and started to read the pages. She then looked at her mother.   
  
Because her mother and father were seemingly the only objects in the universe she couldn't sense, the simple gold cross her mother wore around her neck stood out against that blankness like a shining beacon. 'Well shut my mouth! Maybe I've been looking in the wrong place this whole time.' She caressed the cross, moving her invisible force across the surface molecules. She was careful not to damage it or her mother.  
  
'God, I guess I thought you weren't in this new world I found myself in. They talk about the arrogance of modern man in church and, well, I guess I slipped into that. Sorry.' She wondered if on this plane, god would answer her back, but nothing came and she was actually happier for that. The silence comforted her and she continued. 'You see, I'm in a lot of trouble here God. I'm stuck. I can't find my way back home, not really. So, if you'd just help me out. I know your not into deals or anything, but, if you could give me a hand, I'd really appreciate it.'  
  
For the first time since being overwhelmed by her new found senses that travel through her power, she gave up completely, focused her concentration on nothing and let herself be open to a miracle. In her soul it was like a huge overwhelming sigh. When she began to relax utterly, the forces of the solid bedroom walls fell away, as did her instruments, trophies, books and windows. The ever-present hum of the sun and the moon and Jupiter fell into silence and all that was left was the cross. Finally she let that go too and fell into sleep.  
  
A flicker, a blink, a squirk and a stretch brought news more welcome than anything imaginable to a waiting and blurry Ted Armstrong.   
  
"Mmmmmph! ...Hi Daddy." May woke from her catatonic slumber to find her father by her bedside and a rush of thoughts and emotions came in on the exhausted little girl.   
  
Ted was also overcome with joy but it wasn't in his nature to be overly emotional. The kind face, with its stubble and warn wrinkles simply smiled as he heard the most important thing anyone had ever said to him. "Hi Bunny", He said softly stroking her cheek. "How you feeling?"  
  
The avalanche of realizations and emotions caught up with May as she broke out in tears and sobs. "Oh crap. I've made a mess of things. I'm so Sorry!!!" she choked out before breaking down completely.  
  
"Shhhhhh..... Shh! It's ok bunny. It's ok."   
  
She continued to weep without end. "I just... It's ruined... All that work! ...All our plans! ...My Dreams!" All of the emotions for what for her seemed like years in her time frozen limbo suddenly came rushing back on her. The knowledge that everything would be different from now on was something she had at the beginning of her experience, but she could feel it now that she was back here, looking her father in the face. And it felt like someone had punched her in the heart.  
  
"Oh Honey! Honey bunny! Shhhh." His hand smoothed over her straight blonde hair as she continued to be wracked with sobs. "It will be ok. I have my baby back. That's all that matters, that you're home."  
  
As night descended once again across the midwestern United States Uatu gazed upon the scene below. In New York, a mad man contemplates his own suicide, in Oregon the plants of the forest undergrowth keeps a silent vigil over the unmarked grave of their fallen friend. In Missouri, six young mutant students and their three advisors contemplate the day's events. The subject of their most heated discussions makes a rugged camp in the wilderness as well armed travelers set up shop at the Lamplighter inn off of route 41. Most interesting to Uatu, a girl that had been causing slight disturbances all over this solar system, disturbances that no one else had noticed but he, awoke from a day's restless sleep with the simple greeting 'Hi Daddy.' He watched as the girl who threatened the existence of this area of space, grew to a young woman who was aware of the potential of her powers. He was faintly glad that she had not eliminated this solar system, for if she had, there would be little to watch and his home would be gone. As it was, this girl would entertain him a little while longer. Meanwhile outside his home, moon dust compressed its self into more and more compact arrangements... guided by gravity. 


	8. Meet the Parents

Chapter 8 - Meet the Parents.  
  
Authors Note: This takes place during the Planet X story line from Grant Morrison's New Xmen. I will address the subject matter of that story line even more directly than I have already in the earlier chapters of Gravity Well in order to provide an alternate view of what really happened. As you will see, I try to undo a paradox that currently exists in the Marvel X-verse surrounding Magneto. I would highly recommend reading New X-men 146-150 to get the full back-story I am building on here. While I will try to make my story stand-alone, knowledge of these events from the actual story would be illuminating.  
  
This story is dedicated to the memory of my beloved pet and little friend, My cat Junior. He was a good boy. 1988 - 2004.  
  
So without further ado,... on with the show.  
  
Day broke on a thin blanket of fresh snow covering the tops of everything the eye could see. Inside a modest one story white house, a tiny 16 year old girl with a long straight bob cut looks past the blue shutters, anxious to go outside.  
  
Instead she tunes a new and ornately carved mandolin, which in her hands looks like a small guitar. She carefully turns the pegs, listening to the high-pitched report of the strings as one by one each comes into harmony. She thinks once again of Saturn and the places she was not more than ten days ago. A whole week and a half to get her strength back! "Ten boring freaking days of drinking Gatorade, sleeping and watching endless hours of 'The Eastenders' reruns until my brain goes all cockney." She muttered under her breath.  
  
Grabbing her mandolin by the neck, she charged out of her room and down the hall. In the kitchen her father was eating eggs laid out by the still cooking Mrs. Armstrong. "Dad, can I please get out of here! This is so BORING!" She plopped down next to him at the table. "I'm so bored I am even caught up in history!" She quickly flinged out a happy little chord as if to accentuate the point and looked at her father with a cheesy grin.  
  
Ted Armstrong raised an eyebrow at his only daughter and couldn't help but give a snort at her crazy contortion of a smile. "I want to see what the doctors say, bunny. They still don't know what happened to you."  
  
"Well yeah, and they aren't likely to figure it out ether. I tell you what, if I drink any more Gatorade, it isn't going to be 'in' me anymore! I'll be yakking up orange!"  
  
"Well that's just lovely." The older man said patiently, putting down his fork and casting a newly wary eye at his breakfast. "Honey, you were in a coma for a full day and then slept for 18 hours. You know you're still not right. Give yourself a break here. The world will be ready for you when you are all better." The gentle finality of his words spoke of a lack of patience on this issue. She knew full well that there was to be no discussion. The decision was final. She was going to stay home from school again today.  
  
She skulked into her mandolin and joylessly started to play a strange, wandering little tune. Her fingers knew the riff instinctively without her having to think about it. Free to wander, her thoughts went to the same dark place they have frequented this past week. "Dad, is this it now? Like, forever? I can't stay hiding in the house pretending I'm sick."  
  
"You are sick honey." Ted shook his head and gestured at the little girl with the newly retrieved fork. "For now you rest. This doesn't have anything to do with that other stuff, not really. Anyone who pushed themselves as hard as you did, doing whatever you were doing - don't care, any sensible person would rest up after that kind of thing. You were sick and now you are recovering. No pretending here. Whatever other problems we have, they can wait until Monday. You conserve your strength for that because lord knows you might need it." He pulled a forkful of eggs into his mouth then said around them "And I know will I."  
  
May looked at her dad for a moment. His quiet resolve made her feel better. It always did. And he had said that she might be going back to the school on Monday! Happily, she burst out, "Missed the Saturday Dance!" in song and played along on her mandolin. "Couldn't get past the door! I couldn't make it without yoooooooooooooo..."  
  
Ted suppressed a grin and said, "You know, you're not funny."  
  
"...Don't get around much anymore!" She finished the song with a little flare. After walking over, she kissed her dad on the cheek and said, "Who are you kidding, I'm hilarious!" She walked down the hallway to her room, threw her head back and exclaimed "And bored!!!!"  
  
Matt Grossman cursed the snow as he cleaned off his car. While he enjoyed his position of authority at the Parkview High School, he still wasn't happy about how early it made him get up. A small circle of melted snow surrounded his coffee mug on the hood of his car. As his brush finished it's work on the drivers side window, he let one stroke go astray, flicking a small glob of snow perfectly into his mug. "Aw dang. Typical."  
  
"Good morning principal Grossman." He hadn't heard anyone approach and was given a start by the voice behind him. Turning, he confronted two men, both well dressed. One was older flanked by a younger, more severe looking man with a scar on his face. "I'm Kendal Marks, this is my associate Mr. Jean." The older man said in an easy southern drawl. "I was wondering if I might have a word with you." His practiced handshake extended toward the surprised high school Principal.  
  
Recovering from his shock, the principal took the man's hand joylessly. "I'm familiar with you Mr. Marks. You've been quite busy chatting up the people of our fair city and it doesn't take much guessing to know what your business with me today concerns."  
  
Marks smiled, keeping eye contact with the tall, thin principal. "Well I do so like to talk to the people, Sir, Especially about concerns that we all share. My hope is that you haven't been swayed by popular media into thinking that I'm some sort of hateful fear monger."  
  
Principal Grossman shuffled his feet at the suggestion. "You're little initiative is not my primary concern, Mr. Marks, my children are. Surely you know, not only am I legally compelled to respect the privacy of my students, but I consider it my moral duty to protect these kids. And I won't have you use one of them as a political football." He leaned against the cleared off spot on his car and grabbed the cooling coffee. "So, does anything else bring you to my door at such an early hour?"  
  
Marks's grin flickered for a moment but he regained his composure smoothly. "My interest here is in assisting one of your students integrate into the main stream, Principal Grossman, and protecting all of your other kids. My organization would like to put some of its resources at your disposal, sir. Parkview and this girl need to achieve a level of normalcy so that her education and the education of the other children is unaffected." He clasped his hands. "Tell me, if it's not too much of a breach of your trust with the students, what were you planning on doing with the Armstrong girl?"  
  
The Principal stiffened. "Where did you get that name? Her name was explicitly left out of the press to protect her confidentiality."  
  
"Those same press releases stated that her collapse was during gymnastics practice. It really wasn't much of a challenge, Mr. Grossman." Marks said, the easy grin not leaving his face.  
  
The young lanky principal looked into his coffee and contemplated his terrible luck. 'If these guys could figure that out, who else might know?' he thought. Sgt. Jean could see the tide of the argument about ready to turn. "Well, that,... is... unfortunate. If you really must know, I am going to suggest to the school board that she be schooled at home, as far from the other students as possible so as not to cause any potential harm. But I can't do anything until she tries to return to school."  
  
Sensing his opportunity, the older man smiled. "If I may, I have another suggestion. One that will keep this girl in school where she belongs."  
  
Sergeant Jean watched the two men talk with rapt interest. The plan was coming together far better than he had hoped.  
  
Back in her room, May started to practice her meticulously tuned instrument. She had barely started when a familiar tap on the window stopped her.  
  
"Hey Ms. May!" Jannie bounced as the little girl opened the window.  
  
"Hey Jannie. Do you ever actually GO to first period? How's school?" The young blonde replied, feeling the chill from outside.  
  
"School, my friend, is all abuzz about you and your little mishap!" The Black haired girl exaggeratedly sassed from under her nit cap. "So you see, I'm on my way to school and I happen to catch a glimpse of the newly reclusive Ms. May and I must come and find out what on earth happened to my best friend?!"  
  
"Well someone is chatty today Ms. Jannie" May exaggerated back. "To be honest, though, I'm still not totally sure what happened."  
  
"Yea, like whatever!" Jannie threw her hands. "What I heard is that you flew 8 feet above the gym floor, yelled, then fell like a brick. They said that when they took you away that your eyes had gone completely white! Like a Mutant!"  
  
May started to get pissed "Is that what this is about? You want to know if I'm some kind of freak now?"  
  
"I want to know what happened." The girl outside the window said flatly. "You're my best friend and I want to know if you are ok or what."  
  
"Oh..." May was embarrassed that she had jumped to such a conclusion with her good friend and closest confidant. "Well Dad is keeping me home from school because he thinks I'm not rested up enough and I kinda gota give him that. Even though I'm BEYOND bored. But the thing is, no one really seems to know if I'm ok, especially the doctors. Three different sets of goofballs have come by to take a look at me and no one knows jack!"  
  
Jannie looked puzzled. "If they don't know what's wrong with you, why aren't you in the hospital?"  
  
May looked around and pulled herself to the window. "Jannie, can you keep a secret. I mean a really important secret."  
  
"Yea sure. I'd never tell, you know me!"  
  
"Ok, lookout." May picked up two racquetballs and tossed them into the air. She concentrated and they began to hover. With the dull sound of wind chimes coming from the balls they began to move toward one another, then they began to orbit each other slowly. May's eyes were totally white and her hair stood out on end slightly. "Jannie, I think they were right. I think I AM a mutant." She grabbed the two balls and her hair and eyes went back to normal. "But you can't tell ANYONE! Promise!!!"  
  
Jannie looked at her with a mix of fear and suspicion then said "Ok. This is really messed up but hey, when haven't you been a little weird?" Jannie continued to pry, "But,... What happened to you? I mean, what do you remember?"  
  
"Oh I remember a ton, but I'm still figuring out what it meant. At first I felt like a baby learning how to see and hear. Things just didn't make sense. The first part of that was like, probably those headaches I was having that day, remember? Then it was like I was looking at a 3D picture of the solar system so hard that I thought I was IN the picture. And to make things even weirder I could actually go out and touch things like I really was there."  
  
"Now that's really messed up!" Jannie shuffled her feet in the snow  
  
"Tell me about it. And it really seemed like forever to me. Like I've been gone for years! Time seemed to slow down for me when I was out. I thought I was going to die out there!"  
  
"Weird, so what did you do?"  
  
"Well, after I took some time, A LOT of time, to figure out how I could really work with stuff, I found my way back home. But I still couldn't get out of bizzaro world. You're going to find this freaky, but in the end I prayed for a miracle, and I woke up ok."  
  
Jannie rocked herself on one hip "Don't tell me you are going to be some sort of GOD chick now or something. Cause, that could be a total drag."  
  
"No. But, well, I figure it this way. When I gave up and prayed, I relaxed and that turned whatever it is off." She shrugged. "Was it GOD helping me out? I don't know, but, well,... I guess it doesn't hurt to put in a little more faith and be a little more grateful. Anyway, I've got better control of it now so I don't loose touch like that anymore." May's voice got quiet. "It almost did kill me."  
  
Through the window May's friend was concerned. "Really? Are you ok now?"  
  
"Yea. While I was out there, my body was busy burning up. Any longer and I would have been in real trouble!"  
  
"Well you look fine now." Jannie looked over her friend then added, "with the exception of those sweats! God, you look like something the bag lady threw out." The tall brunette girl teased her friend. May hadn't realized how much she missed Jannie while she had been away. The solar system was a fun playground, but without friends it was just an empty place. "Are you going to try to skip out for the party tonight? It's at woods hole and everyone will be there. Ben and I are going as a couple!!"  
  
"Oh dang! I forgot about that! Uh, I'll see what I can do. Dad has me on a pretty short leash. Glad to hear that you and Ben are cool. He seems really sweet." May thought to herself 'Gossip and parties. This is what homes all about!'  
  
"Ya, he is. Well see what you can do! 11:PM at woods hole! We'll talk more then." Jannie walked across the new snow out of her friends yard waving behind her. May waited until Jannie was out of sight before using her powers again to try to sweep up her tracks so her dad wouldn't know she had visitors. He was being very particular about that.  
  
As she shut the window May's thoughts were of escape. 'I am definitely making that party tonight! I'm so bored I could puke!'  
  
Principal Grossman pulled into the Parkview High parking lot with questions on his mind. 'Extra security, specially trained, offered for free, an opportunity to accommodate yet another special student. How can this be bad?' He shook his head. 'I've heard Marks talk and he seems reasonable, but his agenda seems highly anti-mutant. Can I trust him?'  
  
He looked at the early arriving students through his windshield. 'These kids are what my job is all about. It doesn't matter if I believe that homo superior should just take care of their own. I'm under a mandate to accommodate whatever freak comes through my doors. If Marks can help me do that, well, I guess I'll have to give it a shot.' He bounced his keys in his hands nervously. 'But one mutant related altercation or irregularity and it goes to the board! I signed up to educate kids. HUMAN kids, not some freaks of nature. Inclusion shouldn't extend to these truly dangerous walking weapons!'  
  
As he got out of the car he was approached by a clean cut large tan man in immaculately pressed pants, shined shoes, white shirt and a rent a cop uniform jacket. "Mr. Grossman!?" he called out across the parking lot. "Mr. Grossman, Hi! Jason Queally, I understand you talked to my employer earlier."  
  
"Uh yea, gee you guys move fast!"  
  
He cracked a shy grin. "It helps in our field. We're highly trained and highly motivated. As soon as I got my assignment, I jumped on point."  
  
"I see." He appraised this energetic young man. "Well, as glad as I am to have you on board, I need to get a few things straight. First and foremost, you need to adhere to school policies until such time as your special training is required."  
  
He nodded vigorously. "Yes sir. I'm fully ready to be briefed on proper procedures. I'll have you know that all of my methods are non-lethal and defensive. I'm a bodyguard, primarily, so my primary aim is to neutralize threats before they happen"  
  
"Well in that case I think we'll get along fine. Let me show you around the building and introduce you to the other guard we have here." Principal Grossman guided his new security guard to the front office and thought, 'Marks is one thing, but this guy seems like someone I can trust.'  
  
The simple white house with blue shutters blended in with its neighbors in this quiet neighborhood. Xi'an and Dani felt like intruders in a blue collar Normal Rockwell moment as they pulled up in the ragtop Ed had rented for them in Cleveland.  
  
"Now I know why Ed hates this car. I'm freezing!" Xi'an exclaimed rubbing her long thin hands together for warmth.  
  
Dani scoffed. "It gets a lot colder than this in the deserts at night. You get used to it."  
  
"YOU get used to it. My ancestors and I come from a jungle. A hot, steamy jungle. I'm not cut out for this Midwest burly cold and windy nonsense."  
  
"You didn't seem to mind the cold in New York, or Chicago for that matter!"  
  
"Yea but I wasn't hanging out in a parked car with no heat looking at a house most of the time. What are we waiting for? The cerebra says that this is definitely it. That last burst of power this morning confirms it."  
  
Dani surveyed the scene and something in the back of her mind screamed at her but she couldn't quite place it. "Xi'an, what is this address again?"  
  
"555 Perry way, why?"  
  
Dani's stare was a far off and searching. "I know that address. Why do I know that address? And this place is familiar. Can you do a lookup on the address? Who lives here?"  
  
"According to the Yellow Pages..." Xi'an typed away on a lap top "...Ted Armstrong. Dani! Oh my gosh! That was the name on that horrible notebook!" Her face went wide with astonishment. Visions of the pictures David drew of the memorized mutant killing skills came flooding back into her mind.  
  
Scanning the horizon and in between the houses, the tan skinned American Indian woman opened the driver side door. "I knew I'd been here already. I reconned the house and there was nothing but sleeping people. We need to be ready for trouble." She chastised herself. 'Playing Den mother is making me sloppy. I should have followed up. What with our being cut off from the school and god knows what going on in New York, I can't afford these kinds of mistakes!!'  
  
They approached the front door with Dani leading the way. Xi'an covered her back by searching for nearby minds to possess, but found none. "Hey Dani, I don't read any minds nearby except three people in that house."  
  
"Just keep your guard up. We have no idea what's going on. For all we know this 'Ted' could be our monster"  
  
The Asian girl stole up to the door, now full of fright for what lay behind it. Dani had taken up her position up against the wall next to the door should her friend have any problems with whoever answered the it. Seeing her so blatantly use her shield house to house training filled Xi'an with dread. What awaited them behind the blue door of 555 Perry Way? Sucking up her courage she rang the doorbell.  
  
No sooner had she pulled her hand back from the buzzer than the door whooshed open. Xi'an was about to strike at the consciousness in front of her until she looked at her would be attacker. She found the upturned, smiling face of Dottie Armstrong. "Please come in, both of you!" The four foot two, tiny blonde woman greeted them with all the enthusiasm of a child going up to sit on Santa's lap.  
  
All the fear in Xi'an melted away and she found herself smiling back at the little friendly lady. Dani too found the woman amusing, but wasn't going to give in to the temptation to let her guard down. "Ms Armstrong? I was wondering if I could have a word with you and your husband. Is he home as well?"  
  
"Yes. Yes, home from work. Come in!" she said some what confused that they didn't just make themselves at home. After an awkward pause the small woman backed into the house's one hallway. The two young mutant women stood by the door and exchanged perplexed looks.  
  
Before they could say anything a tall older gentleman with a kind face came from the hallway. "Hello? Um, what can I do for you ladies?"  
His voice was kind and even but guarded. The small woman half hid behind him as he walked.  
  
"Mr. Armstrong?" Dani asked.  
  
"Yes"  
  
"Mr. Armstrong," she continued, "I was wondering if I could talk to you about your daughter. My name is Danielle Moonstar. My associate Xi'an Coy Manh and I represent the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning."  
  
He shook their hands politely. "It's a shame what happened to you all. But what's this to do with May?"  
  
"She shines!" Dottie blurted happily and everyone turned around to look at her. "She Shines. Just like you two, but brighter! Isn't she beautiful?" The tiny woman gestured into the hallway where peaking around the corner was a disheveled young blonde girl all of four foot tall dressed in sweats.  
  
"Oh, uh, Hi" She said suddenly aware of being in the spotlight. "Uh, Thanks mom... I guess." She walked over to her mom who gave her a hug.  
  
"Dot honey, can you give us a moment?"  
  
"What's this about, dad? Who are you?" She came over to sit next to her father on the couch.  
  
"Hi, you must be May? My name's Dani. We were just talking to your father about that. We're from the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning." Dani said smiling at the young girl.  
  
"The mutant school? So I guess I really am a mutant? Is that what's going on?"  
  
Dani continued to try to be reassuring. "Well, we don't want to jump to any conclusions but it appears so."  
  
She nodded her head slightly then asked, "So does that mean you all are mutants too?"  
  
"Um, well, yes." Dani volunteered. She had hoped that a show of trust would help to encourage further dialog but she was totally unprepared for what she heard next.  
  
"I thought only white people were mutants?"  
  
"May!" Ted exclaimed immediately.  
  
"Well except for storm, and that blue guy but he used to be white." She added innocently, like she forgot to express that in the initial statement.  
  
"Which blue guy? The Priest or the Doctor? We have a couple, but they all look the same to me." Xi'an muttered under her breath after recoveing from her initial shock.  
  
Ms Armstrong came up to Dani and over the arm of the couch asked, "Would you all like some water? I could make some tea." Dani just looked at her blankly. The outrage combined with the completely unrelated and simultaneous kindness had momentarily set her brain spinning.  
  
"Lucinda May you go back to your room right now. I won't have you talking that way to our guests." Ted had an even tone in his voice but he was clearly mortified.  
  
May kicked into a whiny tone. She began talking at the floor, being sullen and feeling misunderstood. "I'm just saying, when the term 'Mutant' comes up you think of a group of white people in tights."  
  
"I'll let Bishop know that our outreach program is going famously. He'll be so thrilled" Dani shot Xi'an a glowering look. This isn't the time for sarcasm, but for the life of her, she couldn't think of what to say. Thankfully, someone did.  
  
Ted Armstrong stood to his full height, towering over his daughter and boomed out above the din. "MAY!"  
  
"What?" She shouted back.  
  
"Go to your room." He shot out a pointed finger down the hallway and his tone allowed for no discussion. She ran down the hallway in tears, leaving the faint sound of chimes in her wake. "Please forgive the girl. Folks around here, well, we don't have much practice in what you would call 'diversity' here. She doesn't know how hurtful that kind of talk can be."  
  
The room fell silent as everyone caught their breath. Dottie was still standing and looking down the hallway after her daughter. "I told you, isn't her soul beautiful?"  
  
Ted sighed. "Dot, can you give us a moment? Maybe we could get some of that cider you make so well, Hm? Sweetheart?"  
  
"Oh, Ok Teddy!" She scampered off into the kitchen, which could be seen slightly through a doorway in the back of the living room.  
  
The older man tilted a crooked smile. "I generally like to be a little more welcoming to strangers, especially ones from so far away."  
  
Dani clasped her hands together and became all business "Mr. Armstrong, though we don't try to hide it, it isn't generally common knowledge that at Xavier's institute we constantly scan the globe for new mutant energy signals. We do this for a number of reasons but primary among them is outreach to people who, like your daughter, suddenly find themselves with more power than they know how to control. You are aware of your daughters abilities, aren't you Mr. Armstrong?"  
  
"Yes, she can move things and she says that she can see things in 3d or something. So how do you know about my girl's power?"  
  
"We don't, really, we can only examine the signal that it makes when it's active. I don't mean to alarm you, but when we first detected May's signature, the strength of it was astronomical and it has shown no signs of weakening." Dani looked at the concerned face across from her and tried to use the same blend of compassion and caution she had heard Xavier use countless times. "We believe that she may be a very special girl even among mutants and that the dangers of exploitation and prejudice are even that much greater in her case."  
  
Ted blew out and leaned back into the blue floral sofa. "I'd thought that she might have some problems. Lord knows it's hard to keep a secret in a place like this when you go out of your way to. But with May having to be led off on a stretcher like that, well, people talk. So what about this brings you here Ms. Moonstar?"  
  
"Well, our original intent was to invite your daughter to come and study with us at the school in New York, but as you know, that's not a current option."  
  
"That wouldn't have been an option even if your school were still standing, 'mamm." Dani and Xi'an exchanged looks as Ted spoke again, slowly and evenly. "You see, if you want to go steal some eggs, you raid the hen house. I don't think your school is safe. I'll be keeping my girl in school here where no harm will come to her."  
  
KRACK! David felt a snap in his jaw as the hastily thrown fist made contact with bone.  
  
Through the stars and the haze he saw himself on the phone in Ed's house. "Yea mom. It sure was lucky that we were away when Xavier's got messed up. I don't' know who would do such a thing! Someone real evil I guess. It's too bad though, Josh could have helped some people, I'm sure. I know I should think of myself more, but,... Yea OK, I'll be careful. Hey! Dani found us a school to attend while we're away, and we might be able to help someone out in the process, can you, um, sign a permission slip for me. Yea mom, just like old times."  
  
Boot! A very solid shoe kicks into David's midsection forcing all the air out of his lungs. He faintly hears "Blew the curve", "Making us flunk!" and "Football scholarship!" and thinks about the other day in class.  
  
Ms Fetes was behind her desk and caught him as the others strode past. "David, I know you've only been here for a few days, but you seem to have such a good grasp of American history that I think this is as good a time as any to start recording a grade for you. I'm going to make you take tomorrows test. Don't worry, I grade on a curve. You'll do fine."  
  
BOOT! Another solid kick sends David's stomach into his throat and he vomits.  
  
"Oh man, will you look at that. Come on man, we gota go!"  
  
A malicious voice out of nowhere laughs. "Ha Ha. Don't come back! If you know what's good for you, don't come back. I see you again, you'll be yakking up your spleen!"  
  
The boys in their letterman jackets left David in nauseous misery behind the school cafeteria. He sat for a few minutes grabbing his stomach before Victor came looking for him with his new friend Natalie.  
  
"Oh man! David! Dude you OK?"  
  
David put up his hand to keep Victor from messing with him. "Uh, Yea, Vic, I'm, uh, I'll be ok. Just give me a sec."  
  
Victor took a quick sideways look at Natalie and said privately, "Should I get Josh?"  
  
David pulled close to the younger mutant, pulling himself up and whispering in his ear. "I can't. Gota stay hurt. Blow our cover."  
  
Victor looked up at the dark swollen face of his friend. "Well you should go to the bathroom. I think you got some, Uh,.."  
  
David looked at the puke on his sleve. "Yeah, I'll fix that." He exhaled deeply and painfully, straightening up. "Uh, Hi Natalie. Be seeing you all later."  
  
The two watched the tall young black man walk away when Natalie said, "Your friend is pretty tough."  
  
"Yea, I hope he'll be ok." Victor frowned as they walked from behind the cafeteria and back toward class. Half way down the locker-lined hall Natalie nervously reached for victor's hand and held it for a while. Victor, disguised, as he would have looked without his mutation looked at her, smiled and gave her hand a happy squeeze.  
  
Dani put her mug of cider down on the coffee table and looked across at the Armstrong's. "I don't mean to be rude, sir, but I believe that there is something significant that you've overlooked here. An untrained mutant is not necessarily a the menace that people have alluded to, but they may be a danger to themselves."  
  
Ted looked up once again and nodded. "Yep. We know all about that, unfortunately. May's been recovering from whatever happened in the gym for a good week and a half now. Apparently it used up all she had and then some, almost like she was simultaneously dieting and running a marathon. Doctors don't seem to have a clue and I honestly don't blame them. It's all new."  
  
"Yes, well we have a fully trained staff headed by Prof. Charles Xavier himself in partnership with Dr. Henry McCoy to handle these problems that are unique to mutant physiology." Dani welcomed that he was playing into her argument. "There is simply no other place in the world, that we know of, with the kind of experience and expertise with mutants than Xavier's."  
  
He stood up and went over to a table by the door. "You know, I got something in the mail from some people who would disagree with you on that. A place called the..." He put on his reading glasses and read it off of the top of a page "'Tudia Clinic for Human Mutation Syndrome'. They claim to have pioneered a way to keep mutancy in check, just like cancer." He lifted up the large envelope and waved it at them.  
  
"no. no. no" Mrs. Armstrong meekly squeaked so faintly that only Xi'an could hear her. The Asian girl turned to her and found a look of terror on her face.  
  
"I was thinking of flying us out there to talk to the doctors. Maybe they can, I don't know, put her into remission or something so she can continue her gymnastics career and take up the scholarship hunt. Right now, everyone is treating it like an injury, so maybe we can just treat it and put this behind us. No offense to you, you seem nice and all, and I can tell that you mean well, but this kind of strangeness just isn't for us. If the doctors think they can beat this eventually, than fine, we'll treat it."  
  
"NOOOOO" A terrified shriek came unexpectedly out of Mrs. Armstrong. "No NO! No hospitals! No treatments! No No NO!!" She stood up with a lurch. "Not my shining girl! No, Teddy, not the treatment!!!!!" She ran down the hall to find May slowly walking out of her room.  
  
"What's all the shouting about, mom? What's wrong?" May found herself pulled back into her room by her frantic mother who slammed and locked the door.  
  
The sky of New York was filled with macabrely festive looking iron streamers. Sharp as razors, they were pulled from the ground and the buildings by the elemental force that is Magneto. On the first day of his reign over Manhattan, he set them thrashing upon the citizens of this once great city. The streets ran with the blood of "flatlines" and the air was sick with the soot produced from their burning flesh. The bridges were curled up onto themselves creating a jagged smile, welcoming any would wish to escape. The final war had begun. Magneto had gone completely mad and was unleashing genocide on the human race.  
  
His minions were now out doing his dirty work in the remains of the city. Already, so many dead and just as many so traumatized that they longed to join them in eternal slumber. Toad relished the carnage. Like all of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, He was so addicted to kick, a drug that enhanced their mutant powers exponentially, that his mind had become completely unglued. With a smirk, He thought of the flatline baby he snatched from its mother's arms. He climbed up 15 stories before sending it plunging to its death. When he climbed down he saw the flatline mother still standing with its eyes glued open. Not without compassion, he grabbed her and let her have the same mortal ride to the sidewalk. Admittedly, it wasn't as efficient at dealing death as Basilisk's crematorium. There, whole herds of flatlines, mentally regressed to the level of cattle by the horribly beautiful Esme were burned alive. But his arbitrary method of killing had a horrifying effect on the populous that kept them under a mighty mutant boot.  
  
Looking up through the ribbons of razors that had diced so many on that first day, he wondered of his master. What must be going on in that high tower where he had taken his long time foe Charles Xavier? Toad had the ridiculous notion that they were once again playing chess. Surely the time for games is long since over. The New World Order has begun!!! He took a huge hit off of a kick inhaler and felt his power run through him, making him even more agile and repugnant. And more psychotic! He leapt from the ground onto a lamppost then bound off in search of fresh victims to torment. Perhaps, this time he will only take limbs! Leaving the maimed alive and begging for a merciful death.  
  
Charles Xavier looked out over the balcony of the empire state building to the blood bath that was the city below. 'This is horrible. I must contact Danielle. Magneto has,.. No! I have killed all these people! Thousands of them! She must know. Someone must know. It's madness! Pure and simple. I swore to protect humanity but that was a lie! Everything was a lie! I must contact Daniele before he comes back! No! It's me! It's all a lie!' He looked over his shoulder 'He's coming. He'll kill me this time for sure! But he's my friend! But he's gone mad! I've gone mad! He's here!'  
  
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!"  
  
"Now Honey, I know we hadn't talked about this, but come on! Please open the door." Ted Armstrong pleaded to the locked door.  
  
From the other side of the door May came cautiously towards her mother. "Mom? Mommy? What is it?" She always knew her mother was a little strange, but she was always as sweet as a person could be. This was a terrible and frightening change for her.  
  
Dottie whipped her head around as May touched her shoulder and she said, "No hospitals. No treatments. Don't let them!"  
  
"Ok! Ok, I won't let them take me. No treatments for me, I promise. Can we open the door now?"  
  
"No! I,..." She struggled to find words and plopped down on the bed. "I don't think so. I don't know."  
  
Out in the hall Ted was shaking his head and going back to talk to his guests. "I really don't know what that was about."  
  
Xi'an leaned in and whispered to Dani "Maybe we should leave."  
  
"Mr. Armstrong, I'm sorry if our visit has some how upset your wife." Dani folded her hands. "Maybe we could come back another time?"  
  
"Well, the result would be the same. I'm still not interested in your school for super heroes. I won't have my daughter put in harms way like that." He looked back at the door and said to himself, "I just wish I knew what to do. I wish I knew what Dot is so afraid of."  
  
The two young mutant women looked at each other. "You know, I think I can help you, sir." Dani said as she concentrated on the older of the two minds behind the door. Using her Mutant ability to project another's fears, she pulled what was giving Dottie Armstrong such a fright and projected the image of a large hospital building and grotesquely warped faces of some of the doctors. Prominent among them was a short balding young doctor who seemed to be at the center of the terror.  
  
"What in gods name is that?" Ted said with muted alarm.  
  
Dani looked him in the eye through the now dissipating vision. "That is my special power. I can show someone what they most fear, and this is what your wife is afraid of. Do any of these images ring a bell?"  
  
"None of these things mean a thing to me, but I've got a guess as to where they came from. When we were just coming in to high school, Dottie and I were secretly going steady. You did that kind of thing back then, you know. I really liked her and well, it was a good summer. At the end of the summer she had an accident. That's all they would say, an accident. And when she came back a month latter, her hair was all messed up and she was,... different,... like she is now. She couldn't graduate, but she's the most wonderful mother and wife anyone could hope for. Maybe this is where she went after the accident."  
  
"Well she seems inconsolable now and we can't seem to get through to her." Dani observed the situation. This was going bad and getting worse with each moment. The gloves were off and the powers were out, which gave her an idea. "Xi'an, I know it's a stretch, but is it possible for you to find out some specifics about what happened to Ms. Armstrong? I've seen you mind touch people lightly enough to let the base personality through before. Do you think you can do that now?"  
  
"I can, but it will be difficult. And why don't I just try to take her over and open the door?"  
  
"Because whatever is scaring her is still going to scare her once you let her go. Just please, give this a shot." Dani pleaded her case. She knew that this was not easy for her friend, but they had wound up in such a bad spot that they had to do something.  
  
The tall man shook his head at all this then said, "After all that's happened lately it seems a good a plan as any. Please be careful young lady."  
  
Xi'an concentrated. At first she did what comes naturally and completely took over Dottie's mind. On the other side of the door the older woman's body lurched with a large gasp of breath that interrupted her murmured stream of babble.  
  
"Mom? Are you ok? This is scaring me."  
  
"It was a light! Not your light but,... Oh! Here it comes again!"  
  
Lightly possessing Mrs. Armstrong Xi'an was able to see the world through her eyes without affecting her. What she saw was startling. May was standing before her bathed in iridescent light of all colors. It blobbed around her and her surroundings like a lava lamp. It was spectacular! Looking at the door she saw a point of light. A shining star bursting with flowers appeared where Ted would be standing if she could see through the wall. Also visible were a black and red cloud where Dani would be and pink and purple rays coming out of where her own body would be. Coming through the door, the rays clouded her vision as they surrounded her.  
  
The Asian Psionic had yet to understand what she was seeing when a much younger voice rang out inside of the mind she inhabited. 'Ah, There you are. Finally! Come on!' She felt a tug at the base of her mind and found herself being tugged downward into the subconscious realm. On her own, Xi'an could not pierce this barrier into the unknown reaches of the mind so she was not at all sure what to expect. What she found was herself walking behind a little blonde girl. The girl looked almost exactly like May but dressed in clothes from the mid sixties. She was beckoning Xi'an forward through a row of streetlamps toward a large spooky looking building. 'Well, come on. You've come all this way, after all. You may as well see all there is to see.'  
  
'You're Dot, aren't you.' Xi'an said flatly.  
  
'Yep. I've been in here all along. Just because someone has a hard time with the world, doesn't mean she doesn't know a thing or two. That probably doesn't make much sense. Lets start from the beginning, if such a thing exists.' The young girl pointed at the nearest streetlamp and it became huge, overwhelming everything.  
  
Xi'an found herself on a crowded beach. The sun was starting to sink in the sky to her right at an unusually fast pace as she faced the ocean. 'This must be the Gulf of Mexico.' She thought.  
  
'Bingo!' The voice said from behind her. 'It's Gulf Shores Alabama. The 'Redneck Riviera!' ' People started to gather around the bikini clad young woman on a deck chair. Her one hand held a novel and the other a bottle of coke. No matter how the sun changed, the shadow of the umbrella over the deck chair stayed perfectly still. As other shadows approached it, they bent wildly around, leaving the happy octagon unblemished. 'What better bastion of culture, science and above all, understanding for a young mutant to first manifest her light bending powers!' She closed her book and planted her feet in the sand, pointing at the gathered crowd. 'People thought I was the devil! One guy even threw a brick at me and sent me to the worst place I could have ever imagined! You may have your hell, I've got the Hospital.'  
  
A young man from the crowd came forward, took aim at the blonde girl then threw a brick. The brick turned in mid air and hit Xi'an square in the face.  
  
When she came too Xi'an was strapped down on a gurney in an old style ambulance. The blonde girl now had on a nurse's uniform. 'Comfy? I wouldn't really want to tell you but you'll spend a month like this, off and on.' The light in the ambulance was crazy and the nurse girl said, 'You've only yourself to blame for the spots you see. If you weren't an evil mutant, God's light would shine down on you from upon high and uninterrupted. Instead you've got spots. Let's try to clean those out, shall we?'  
  
The ambulance door opened without the car slowing. the tiny blonde girl rode Xi'an's chest as the gurney shot out of the back of the speeding car. The pair was heading straight and true toward the spooky building from before. Now, Xi'an could see mouths with fangs where windows should be and gargoyles feeding on captured pigeons. As they were just about to hit the wall, it opened up another mouth and swallowed them both.  
  
Still strapped to the gurney, Xi'an could sense that she was in total darkness. There was a dripping sound not too far off and in the room with her, Footsteps!!!!  
  
A door opened down a hallway, showing a door. The blonde girl framed the door, filling only the bottom half with her tiny silhouette. 'Afraid? Well, you should be. The Doc here is going to try to clean those spots up for you. Want a tough stain out? Shout it out!' The room exploded with lights from every angle. Hot white and intense, Xi'an did whatever he could to protect her eyes. When a large, black, cooling spot appeared in front of her vision, a bald, fat little doctor off to the left pulled down a switch lever and sent voltage through her brain. She struggled and screamed as the blonde girl smiled. Finally, Xi'an passed out again.  
  
She found herself in the back of an open horse carriage riding through central park. The blonde woman, obviously a young Mrs. Armstrong, was in the other seat gazing at the trees. 'You see, they tried to burn out my mutant power, but all they could do was change it to the point where I had no choice but to hide the talent. Through hate and ignorance they tried to stomp out the flower that was me. Instead, they just ripped off the petals until you could no longer tell that there was ever a flower there at all.' She blew into her hand and white flower petals blew and rose across the New York skyline. 'My husband took me here for our honeymoon. May was conceived on the 33rd floor off of 42nd street that very same night. I can't have other children. They say the strain would kill me. He's a good man, Ted, but I'm afraid he's in over his head here. Please, don't ever tell him of this, my past, my present. It would only hurt him. I don't want him to know that I'm,... broken. He only knows our love and I'd like to leave it at that.'  
  
The scene shifted and Xi'an was rowing a rowboat in the parks little pond. 'I know him, he's my soul mate. It hurts me some times that I can no longer have a normal adult conversation with him but I'm not bitter. I have a home, Love, and a beautiful daughter whom I love very much. She's not perfect and in many ways I'm to blame for that. I'm afraid I haven't been much of a mother.'  
  
Xi'an stopped rowing. The boat coasted across the petal-strewn water. She wanted to say something reassuring but knew that this was her time to listen.  
  
'I want the best for her and I can't protect her from the dangers of the world as I am now. It's too hard on me to communicate this way and our time is short. I see goodness in you Xi'an Coy Manh, and in your friends, the one here and the others, the kids and even the funny one at the library. I trust you. Be good to my precious daughter, for she is my life, my love, my everything. Even a broken flower can beget a seed, and watch it grow.'  
  
A single tear fell from the small woman's face and landed in the pond. The ripples grew out from the center to envelop everything in the park.  
  
Xi'an found herself staring at the ceiling in the Armstrong's house.  
  
From opposite sides of her field of view she saw the concerned faces of Ted and Dani bent down over her. Ignoring the sore spot on the back of her head, she started to try to tell Dani what happened. Then the door opened and the three of them, crouched in the hallway, saw Mrs. Armstrong. To the dazed Xi'an she looked like the woman she had just left in the rowboat, but the poise and majesty she radiated stunned Dani and Ted. She came out and walked right up to her husband as May peaked around the frame of her bedroom door. Ted stood up and looked at his wife as she spoke clearly and forcefully, yet full of grace. "No Hospitals. No Treatments. She is exactly as she is to be." She looked at Dani and Xi'an, still on the floor. "I trust these people Teddy. No hospitals." She hugged him and kissed his chest.  
  
Ted looked over his shoulder at Dani who was helping her friend get up. "I guess I'm going to need your contact information." He stroked his wife's hair lovingly.  
  
Dani sighed out "Uh, yeah. We can begin lessons, um, anytime." Ted just nodded. Dani looked at May, who had an apprehensive look on her face then to her still embracing parents. "So, I'll,... um,... leave the brochures on the coffee table with my cell phone number and, we'll call tomorrow about 11?" She talked while backing away from the family and the awkward feeling that she was stepping on a true Norman Rockwell moment.  
  
"That will be fine. If you could please let yourselves out?" Ted still hadn't let go of his wife.  
  
Xi'an taking the lead for the first time today, said, "You got it!" and pulled Dani from the house.  
  
They marched wordlessly back to the car. Dani sat for a moment behind the wheel then said "Boy, that was odd."  
  
"Yea, well you didn't get bricked in the face." Xi'an replied, rubbing the back of her head.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Just drive."  
  
The bell rang to let the students out for the day and the once quiet and empty hallway gave way to streams of pandemonium pouring form the classrooms. It was in a backwater of this sea of teenaged humanity that four powerful super beings planned their next move.  
  
"So what are you guys doing again?"  
  
"We are going to the Exchange Club meeting" Sofia Chirped. "Ed said he'd pick us all up in about an hour." She accompanied Josh, who was totally in his element at the school.  
  
"Yea, since we're supposed to be exchange students, Dani thought it would be a good idea if we went and represented, you know what I mean?"  
  
An uncomfortable and disguised Cessile looked around and said, "Uh, sure, Snoop Dog. We'll be in the library doing homework. Remember what that is?"  
  
Laurie looked at Cessile's back as she walked away. "Thanks for the invite guys, but you know how I am about small rooms crowded with strangers. Wouldn't want to, well, you know." Sofia looked at her friend with pity while Josh seemed to have missed the point. "Go on. Have fun." she shoed.  
  
"Ok, we will go have fun. You'll tell Victor and David?"  
  
"Victor said he was walking home or something and David already got a ride home from Ed. It's horrible what those jerks did to him!"  
  
"Something tells me that's not quite over yet. David, he will come back. He is not lacking in guts, I think."  
  
As Laurie hurried off to catch up, the new security guard kept an eagle eye on her and all the other passing students. Mr. Queally was already cataloging potential troublemakers and looking for week points in the security procedures. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a dark flash. It was only because he knew what to look for that he detected what no one else in the hallway could see. There was a man wearing a dark hat and coat hiding in plain sight. Around his shoulder was a bag full of surveillance equipment.  
  
The Sergeant had let him know that there was another team on this assignment. Like him, they were concerned with the safety of the Armstrong girl. On the other hand, they were covert, watching for anything suspicious from a more remote vantage point. He was thankful to have them because even at his most vigilant, he was only one man in a big school.  
  
The man in the hat slipped into a room. The security guard knew that the chances of ever seeing him again were slim unless he wanted to be seen. It was some sort of ninja thing, and boy was it spooky. Jason thought to himself, 'Sure am glad he's on our team!'  
  
Atop a Manhattan skyscraper, Magneto looked down on the nightmare he had created. He had no remorse. His will was iron.  
  
Behind him in the room, Esme's short blonde hair rumpled against the satin pillows of his bed. He had almost tired of his little play toy. Almost.  
  
"You know, they are going to come for you. The X-men. You must know that someone will come. We didn't kill them all." She sat up in bed and scratched her head. "Are you prepared for that?"  
  
On the balcony, Magneto lifted an inhaler of kick, took a huge hit and tossed it over into the abyss. "I'm more than ready for the X-men to come for me my dear. More than ready." 


	9. Bring on the Night Kegger Part 1 of 2

Chapter 9 - Bring on the Night! - Kegger Part 1 of 2  
  
"This is the News Tonight! With Anchorman Ken Bland. Tonight's Debate, You've heard about it before, but now mutant registration goes local in state referendums. Hear both sides on The News Tonight with Ken Bland!"  
  
On TV, the anchorman begins his show as a talking head. "Good evening. We are joined today by the leader of the pro-human group, Purity, Mr. Kendal Marks. Purity's referendum and recent remarks by its members about mutants and mutant rights, have stirred up quite a bit of controversy. Mr. Marks, I'm glad you could join us tonight. And from our Los Angeles affiliate, Elizabeth Norris of the ACLU is kind enough to joins us. No doubt we are in for a lively debate, and we are glad that you, the informed public, could be here to participate. We will take your calls later, but right now, Ms. Norris, would you like to start?"  
  
"Certainly. And thank you for having me on your program." Elizabeth Norris, hair in a bun and in studious looking horn-rimmed glasses nodded respectfully at the commentator before addressing the camera. "The ACLU is strongly opposed to any abridgement of the freedoms afforded to every citizen under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The 'Mutant Classification Act' is a clear violation of a person's right to privacy and is as reckless a notion as one can conceive."  
  
"Yeah! That's a girl Liz! Send that slimy hick back to the sticks!" Ed Legit had a can of beer in one hand and the remote control in the other. The dark sunglasses he always wore perched themselves, as if by magic, on his bald head.  
  
"SHHhhhh! Do you mind?" Dani leaned forward to look at him across her friend Xi'an Coy Manh. "I'm trying to listen."  
  
"Sorry, I'm just glad that the ACLU has Liz Norris on this one. I met her at a symposium last year. Feisty and sharp as a tack! She'll take this guy apart!"  
  
Dani was still peeved. "What part of shut up don't you understand?" The tall American Indian woman emphasized her chiding with a stern glance that did little to dampen his spirits.  
  
"Ah Dani," he said with a wry grin, "you've the wit and grace to rival the cleverest of 8 year olds."  
  
Xi'an snickered as the debate raged from the TV. Ed flashed her a cocky smile as Dani resumed her grump.  
  
"I'm Kendal Marks, and my organization, Purity, is proposing a rule change to the licensing requirements for the privilege of operating an automobile in the state of Missouri." Marks smiled as friendly as he could get away with. He was dressed in a brown sports coat, which gave him a neighborly look. "Purity would like to add language and procedures so that we can be assured that any individual with a mutation is under sufficient control of that mutation to be entrusted with a motorized vehicle."  
  
Liz Norris quickly jumped in. "This is about much more than driving safety and you know that, Mr. Marks. There is a provision in here to alert the public, and the person's neighbors, of their mutation."  
  
"A simple warning of a public safety hazard!" The split screen showed Marks' smile next to Norris's indignant frown.  
  
"Safety hazard? These are people here!"  
  
"Are they?" He raised an eyebrow at the middle-aged lawyer. "And what if one of your so-called people is a safety hazard by their very nature?"  
  
Ms. Norris appeared to remember herself and sunk once again into a dispassionate stance, so as to best argue her case. "Under your definition then, many people would be hazardous. Would you do the same for Schizophrenics?"  
  
"Well now, there you've got apples and oranges, Ms. Norris." A longer shot of Marks, sitting at a table across from the sharply dressed lawyer, showed the easy juggling motion that accompanied his comments. "You get a mutant living next to you, they could have any number of dangerous, uncontrollable powers. A crazy person is just crazy."  
  
"To use a phrase you might be familiar with, guns don't kill people, people kill people. You've made the assumption that most mutations are inherently dangerous, which they are not. What is dangerous is someone with a motivation to do grave bodily harm to another person. And yet we still respect, even in people with a history and pattern of violent behavior, the constitutionally granted rights to privacy and their implicitly granted right to the pursuit of happiness."  
  
"If you are saying that a mutation is like a gun, we do license guns in this country."  
  
"That is a point, though there are those who believe that even gun registration is a curb on their freedoms. But we do not stigmatize gun owners in this country, and gun owning is a right, not a race. You may choose to be a gun owner but you are born a mutant. Additionally, we don't go out of our way to advertise to their neighbors that they own a weapon."  
  
The moderator came up as a full screen and said, "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to interrupt you. We need to take a commercial break. We'll be right back with your phone calls right after this."  
  
Ed hit the mute button on the remote control with gusto and said, "Well this is my kind of show! Anyone else want some popcorn?"  
  
Dani continued to look at the screen with rapt attention. "Uh, sure, Ed. I'm sure that would go well with witnessing the gradual reduction of our civil liberties."  
  
Xi'an sprang to her feet. "Then, I'll help with the butter!"  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
In the kitchen, Ed made some popcorn with a hot air popper. It was among the random kitchen appliances that came with the rental house they now called home. "For something of such limited functionality, it serves its purpose quite well, wouldn't you say? It just screams seventies as sure as you can say RONCO!"  
  
Xi'an giggled while watching the butter melt in the microwave. "It does seem to be a little silly to have a special gadget just to make popcorn. Why not just make it on the stove in a pot?"  
  
"I don't see you having any problems with the idea of a coffee maker." Ed looked with satisfaction at his big bowl of freshly popped snacks.  
  
Xi'an looked at him seriously. "You obviously don't understand that coffee is not a thing to be trifled with."  
  
"Well, yes, but I like to live dangerously. Speaking of which, when this telecast is over, do you want to go out and see what night life Springfield has for us on a wintry Friday night?"  
  
The question hung in the air like a brick as the two looked at each other. The unflattering glow of the kitchen's fluorescent lighting fixture added an additional layer of naked reality to the moment. The question so easily asked was answered by the pained look on Xi'an's face.  
  
Dani broke the silence between the two from the other room, shouting, "Hey, it's starting again. Where's the danged remote?"  
  
"Ok, then," the not quite middle aged lawyer said and started past her to go into the family room.  
  
As he past Xi'an sputtered "Ed, wait, stop. It's not like that."  
  
"So, what is it like?" He stopped with them both framed in the door way and the tight quarters gave him an anxious resolve to understand why. "Aside from being fat and bald I'm not that repulsive. So what is it?"  
  
"Your not fat. And... Dani didn't tell you?"  
  
"Dani and I don't chit chat that much." He put on a more animated persona and whispered in mock secrecy. "Between you and me, I don't think she likes lawyers, because it can't be my winning personality." His honest voice returned as he looked her in the eyes. "You and I, on the other hand, get along great. I've even caught you laughing at my natural charm and wit. So what's the problem? Do you not date white guys?"  
  
Xi'an pulled her eyes away and coyly said, "Well, actually, no."  
  
The bald head adorned with glasses poked out at her like the point of a finger and scowled. "Well that's just damn shallow. I thought better of you."  
  
"What? Oh. No. I don't date ANY guys!"  
  
For a moment Ed was still as if looking at something inside his glasses. "Oh, I'm sorry, I hadn't," he stammered, embarrassed. "I mean, I guess I didn't notice before. Wow, I feel like a jerk."  
  
"Don't," she said softly. "Really, I'm flattered. You're a really sweet guy, it's just... You're a guy. I thought you knew I was into women. And for the record I AM amused by your natural wit and charm." She touched his hand as it was still grabbing the bowl of popcorn. "So, still want to test the night life?"  
  
"Actually, that might be kind of weird and uncomfortable now. Maybe later." He grinned sheepishly at her.  
  
She attempted to look at his eyes but saw only her own reflection. "Yea. You sure you're ok?"  
  
He lifted his chin up and gave an exaggerated over dignified face. "My dear, you are the prettiest, most classy lady to ever dump me and that's rarified company. I'll survive."  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
"I'm freezing to death, but this is fun! Look at all this snow! I never realized that it just got everywhere like this!" Sofia put her hand on a parked car and picked up a handful of snow.  
  
David kept his hands in his pockets. "This is nothing, in Chicago we used to get feet of the stuff every winter!"  
  
"Really? Wow, I'd love that!" Sofia exclaimed, kicking the snow in front of her.  
  
David kept his hands in his pockets and crushed an icy clump. "Not if you had to shovel it off your driveway, you wouldn't"  
  
Josh spoke, catching up with the two older kids. "I don't know. As a kid I'd make a mint shoveling sidewalks! And plus, there are snowball fights!"  
  
Innocently Sofia asked, "What is a snowball?"  
  
David was astonished. "You don't know what a snowball is?"  
  
Sofia shook her head and then was pelted in her ear with a snowball thrown by Josh. She shrieked, but laughed at the feeling of the cold slush.  
  
"That is a snowball," David said, flatly.  
  
Laurie was quick to defend her friend and shouted "Hey Josh!" She lobbed an oversized ball of snow at the boy she had a crush on.  
  
Josh quickly ducked and the large loosely packed snowball hit Cessily right in the face.  
  
Everyone went quiet with shock. Laurie put her hands over her mouth in surprise as Sofia nervously giggled at her friend's mistake.  
  
Exaggeratedly wiping her face, Cessily started to grin an evil grin and said slowly, "You are all, so dead. I almost feel sorry for you"  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
"Man, she killed him!" The show went on for a full half hour and when it was done Dani got up and switched off the TV. "What a relief!" She threw her hands up. "Marks came off as a total reactionary"  
  
"Yes, he did." Ed's depressed tone belied the hopefulness of his words. "Liz did herself proud. She showed him for the mutant hating fool he is and exposed his plans as unconstitutional, unfair and dangerous."  
  
Xi'an questioned him. "I mean, that's it, right? We won? He's exposed as a mutant hater and is referendum goes down, and, well, isn't that it?"  
  
Ed looked at the two young women who were staring at him. "Ah, the life of a combatant." He slipped easily into sarcasm. "You think that all you have to do is hit the bad guy enough times with the right hammer and you can walk away happy." He straightened up, and rubbed his face with his hands, momentarily exposing the huge, black bulging eyes that he hid under his glasses. "We lost. We lost this one before it even started. All that our efforts in shutting this joker down on nation-wide TV mean is that it's not as complete a loss as it would have been had he shown up unopposed."  
  
Dani shook her head while Xi'an needed more convincing. "I don't get it. That Norris woman mopped the floor with him."  
  
Ed sighed. "It's like this. People make up their own minds. It wouldn't have mattered if we had exposed him for the devil himself if people are afraid. People are afraid right now. The area around New York is a complete electronic wasteland for miles. A magnetic force field seems to be in place, and people can only guess what that means. The only way in or out is to walk."  
  
"But, the X-men." Dani shook her head and her braids went from side to side. "Surely some of the X-men would oppose Magneto, even if it is him. And it can't be. He's supremely and utterly dead in Genosha. Lorna said so!"  
  
"Well if Lorna said so... Isn't she the one who tried to kill her boyfriend for dumping her at the altar? Strong testimony. Even so, there have been rumors of atrocities. They don't even need to be true to whip up a new mutant witch hunt. This guy is a bigot, but he's not stupid and, in light of some of the things we've seen lately, he's not even entirely wrong."  
  
"I can't believe you are defending him!" Xi'an exclaimed.  
  
He put up his hand as if being placed under oath. "I merely give credit to his argument. Denial of the truth doesn't make it any less real to people. And now the idea that mutants are a threat and to deal with them we should out them publicly has been given voice through the TV. Scary as it is, Americans trust TV to give them the truth and tell them what to think. It doesn't matter that the idea was shown to be unconstitutional, illegal or dangerous in the next breath. If it sounds to Mrs. and Mr. Lunch pail like it will keep them safe, they will internalize that idea and make it their own. Kids, I'm afraid the stakes have just gone up." He got up out of his chair. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go congratulate Liz on her diction, debating skills and fashion sense."  
  
Xi'an exclaimed, "What? Wait a second, you KNOW her?"  
  
"Well, Yeah, I've been doing research on Marks, his speeches, his arguments and his debating style ever since I got here. I coached Liz on how to get this guy." He looked at the two stunned young women. "What? You think I've been drinking beer and playing taxi driver for the past week and a half?" He held his stomach and stifled a belch. "I'm way too smooth an operative to waste on that kind of nonsense." He went into the kitchen still rubbing his belly.  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
In a quiet house on Perry way, May Armstrong was planning to make a break for it. She looked out the window of her bedroom at the pristine field of snow and chuckled to herself. 'Footprints Smootprints. I can fly! I am now, officially, un-bustable!'  
  
With an experienced touch, her tiny fingers opened the latch on the window and raised the sash. She faced the open window, put her arms out, closed her eyes, and concentrated. To the accompaniment of the faint sound of chimes, her hair and clothing began to lazily float.  
  
She felt the weight of her body disappear completely and so didn't stand on the floor as much as hover in proximity to it. Now opening her pure white eyes, she slowly raised her feet from the ground. Not knowing what else to do, May followed her gymnast's instinct and grabbed her knees. This gave her a little forward spin and she stretched back out so she was almost flat like Superman.  
  
She stayed like this for a while, uncertain how to get herself to move. Her body was now free of gravity, but it stayed still relative to the Earth by reflex. 'Dang, I feel silly,' she thought. 'Maybe I need to concentrate on being massive to something in front of me and that will...' She suddenly shot across the yard and smacked into the old oak tree she saw in her neighbor's yard. The power had made her far too massive, but only to that tree. Nature took over and she wound up falling into it.  
  
Grabbing on to the tree trunk and looking behind her and down, she muttered to herself "Ok, Guess I gota work on the whole flying thing."  
  
Back in the house, Ted looked at the clock. 'Hrm. Eleven thirty. Must be Woods Hole for midnight. Better call Bill and ask him to stay open late. I could use a beer anyway.' He pulled back the covers and put his feet down on the ground.  
  
Mrs. Armstrong turned over and looked at his back. "Teddy?" she said quietly.  
  
"It's all right, Love. We just got ourselves a runner is all."  
  
She turned back over. "Mmmph. Say hi to Bill. I love you."  
  
His hand smoothed over her back. "I love you too. I'll keep an eye on our precious."  
  
"Mmm Good." As he watched, she drifted off to sleep.  
  
He got up and dressed himself for the cold. It was going to be a late night.  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
Dani and Xi'an were watching the local news and half listening to Ed talk on the phone. "I swear, he sounds sarcastic even when you can't tell what he's saying!"  
  
Xi'an looked at her friend without raising her head off of the back of the couch. "You know, I think you're a little hard on the guy. He's been really helpful!"  
  
"Yea, I know. He just seems, I don't know, kind of smarmy to me. Cocky and Arrogant. I mean, how many times have we saved the world, you and I? Countless times. And this guy just comes on in and..."  
  
"And what? Give us all plane tickets so we can further our mission? Rent a house? Get the kids into school? Yea, what else has he done? I don't know, maybe he helped out that lawyer lady on TV?"  
  
"But, that's his job." She shot back defensively.  
  
Xi'an crossed her arms. "Yea, only because he chose it to be so." She started to get upset.  
  
"Ok! I didn't know this was such a touchy subject. I'm really sorry for being so cranky lately. I just, I still think that we are missing something. We got really more fortunate than we deserve with David picking up the thoughts of our 'monster' and still, we have no idea who he is. Maybe we're missing something."  
  
"Maybe you should let Ed help. I still don't know why you wouldn't tell him about the notebook when we first got it."  
  
"Xi'an! We hardly know him. Sure he's X-corp, but this is extremely sensitive stuff."  
  
"Do you trust me Dani?" She at the tan skinned girl with her clear brown eyes and Dani could clearly see how resolute she was.  
  
"Ok, fine. We'll show him the notebook."  
  
At that moment, Ed came walking in from the kitchen. "It's about danged time! I knew you all had some good clue you were keeping hush about. Let's get this investigation started!"  
  
"Were you listening the whole time?" Dani was amazed.  
  
"It's a little trick I learned while coping with my visual powers. I can be holding a conversation and still concentrate on what others are saying. I've also picked up on your body language and put two and two together. Neat, eh?" He smiled. "So where's this notebook?"  
  
"Hold on, I'll get it." Dani walked back to the boy's room and slowly opened the door. A shaft of light from the hallway hit the now empty bunk of David Allyne. Dani yelped "Oh my god!"  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry!" Laurie pleaded.  
  
Cessily smiled wickedly. "Not nearly as sorry as your going be, Blondie!" She stepped over to the back of a car and stretched her hands out to grab all the snow off the car's trunk. While she pushed the snow into the hands and arms of her highly malleable body, the red head's image inducer struggled in vain to keep up.  
  
She turned and produced snowballs in both hands from the tubes she had made of her arms. "Run! She's a snowball machine!" Josh laughed as he started to run away. Cessily targeted him first and tagged him in the back of the head. Laurie was running behind Sofia until she fell on her backside trying to dodge another snowball. As she ran past the now sitting Laurie, Cessily dumped a small pile of snow on her blonde head and gave it a little pat.  
  
Sofia was laughing wildly as the wickedly grinning red head gained on her. "Victor! Get her!"  
  
Victor had been ignored by Cessily and now he looked to take advantage of her oversight. With his long prehensile tongue he grabbed an overhead street lamp that was half way between him and the marauding red headed snow monster. Judging his timing, he lashed out and grabbed the street lamp with his tongue and retracted it. He shot into the air, did a flat flip in the air and came down with his feet crashing into Cessily's shoulders. She smooshed, face first into a snowy front lawn under the force of his jarring blow. In his triumph he exclaimed, "Ha! Gotcha!"  
  
Cessily turned her face all the way around to face victor. She had the same wicked smile on her face as when she was chasing the girls. The image inducer crackled around her neck where the program tried to adjust to this normally impossible situation.  
  
"Oh No!" Victor said.  
  
"Oh Yes!" She laughed as her mouth became impossibly wide and she expelled about a gallon of snow directly into victor's face. From all angles it looked like she was throwing up snow.  
  
"Gnarly!", Josh said as the girls both exclaimed, "EEEEWWWWWW!!"  
  
Victor couldn't get off of her fast enough. He wiped his face free of snow and shook his head, making his own image inducer crackle. "That was SO ... SICK!" Cessily got up laughing proudly at grossing out everyone.  
  
David interrupted the fun. "Hey you guys, we really need to keep it down, or else were going to get... oh dang, we're already busted."  
  
Laurie looked at him with a puzzled look while getting off of the ground. "What? How do you know?"  
  
"Victor's French just got a whole lot better."  
  
Victor stood looking slightly effeminate with his hand on his hip. "Do you all know how worried Dani and I were about where you are? How on Earth can you just sneak out without telling us?" She looked down at Victor's shirt. "Why am I wet?"  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
"Honey!" The pleading woman's voice rang out in the kitchen of a middle class suburban home. The home was not to far from the home of Ted and Dottie Armstrong and the parents there are dealing with much the same problems. Unfortunately they aren't having nearly as much success.  
  
"Don't 'honey' me," the husband's voice quietly admonished. "I never thought that this would be so tough. She scares the other children at school! It's uncontrollable!" He turned around, exasperated.  
  
"She's not an 'It' and she doesn't need to be defined by 'It'. She's a little girl with a problem and we knew that going in." The woman stared at her husband's back.  
  
The young man turned around to face his wife. "Look, the case worker let us know that we could go to her if we have a problem. Well I've got a problem. And this is affecting our relationship." He held hands with his wife and continued. "We signed up for a year as foster parents but in the, what, four months she's been here, how many times have we been at the school. How many times have we fought? We never used to fight. Now it's 'Kate this' and 'Kate that.' I just don't know anymore, honey." He let go of her hand and wiped his face, trying to rub off the frustration. "And the rhyming. The 'rhyming' is driving me crazy. You know I started to do it at work myself?"  
  
The woman stared into his eyes with a hurt expression. "I can't believe you. What if we have a special child of our own one day? Maybe one with Obsessive Compulsive disorder? Would you want to give that one back too?"  
  
"That's different."  
  
"Is it?" The question hung in the air but it was clear that the stakes had been raised and the battle lines drawn. The fight continued into the late night.  
  
In an upstairs bedroom, a little girl with a straight bob looks out the window and thinks in rhyme.  
  
'They talk about me, as I can see.  
And they do it near, don't care if I hear.'  
  
'They mean to show me to the door,  
I don't think they want me anymore.  
I wish that I could find my mother,  
Life is hard with any other.  
The fight downstairs is never ending. These two seem to forget their wedding.  
Maybe If I prod and poke, they'll realize the fight's a joke'  
With a blink and a wink I make it so,  
for I am the Princess of All You Know!'  
  
Laughter erupts from the downstairs kitchen, followed by soft words and the silence of a loving hug. In her room Kate continues watching the world outside. From her left, she sees six kids walking up the street. She can see them talking to one another but can't hear what they're saying. They pass as she catalogs each one. Black boy with a gray jacket, blue jeans and a baseball cap. White boy talking to him with a green jacket and jeans and brown hair. White girl, long blonde hair and pink jacket and white slacks talking to a White blonde boy in a beige jacket, jeans and red converse all stars. Brunette girl talking to... She stopped short.  
  
'Oh my RED HAIR! Look at all the red hair there!  
I must know her, know her best,  
For I am the one and only Princess!'  
  
She blinked her eyes and sought to conquer the landscape of Cessily's mind. Much like the girl herself, Cessily's consciousness flowed like quicksilver, hovering inside every molecule of her mercury body.  
  
'Oh my, oh my, and what a find. She has no brain but has a mind!  
Maybe she'll be a friend to me,  
I must get closer so I can see!'  
  
Kate concentrated on Cessily but it was no use. She had walked out of range of the little girl's grip but instead of being disappointed the girl smiled.  
  
'Playing games is always fun and this little game has just begun!'  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
They filed into the family room slowly, feeling ashamed. Dani got right to the point. "What on Earth do you think you're doing sneaking out like that? You had me worried sick! This isn't like home where Xavier's is patrolled to prevent harm to you kids. Don't you know how dangerous it is out there? What if someone knew you were mutants? There are magistrates, Sentinels, Evil mutants, and lets not forget those Purity yahoos and the guy you discovered on the plane David. You think HE is interested in sneaking out to go and PARTY?"  
  
"Don't you think you're being a little harsh?" All eyes turned around to see Ed leaning up against the wall. "I mean... these are kids, not soldiers. If they are supposed to be under cover as highschool students wouldn't a strict adherence to the rules be noticeable to the other kids?"  
  
"Don't start Ed. Look, I've seen what these people can do and I think it would be too dangerous to let them out alone and unsupervised." Dani stood firm. "I mean, what were you guys thinking?"  
  
"Well, we were thinking that we should try to fit in with the other students. And it's true; everyone we've met is going to be at that party. Even Laurie and Cessily found out about it and they were hanging out in the library!" David pointed at Laurie who couldn't hold back a goofy smile.  
  
"I guess that's a point, but what would you do if you got in trouble?"  
  
Josh looked at her, confused. "Don't you think we'd call if we got in trouble?" He fished a flip phone out of his jacket pocket. One by one the others all produced phones.  
  
Dani was truly confused. "Where did you get those?" All eyes again looked at Ed.  
  
Ed looked at all the eyes on him. "What? Kids have cell phones these days. Besides, X-corp not only pays the bill, but requires field agents to have them at all times." He produced his own matching phone.  
  
"But these kids aren't field agents!" Dani pleaded.  
  
"They are if you want X-corp to pay the rent here. I've got to justify the expenses we're racking up and I'm having to be creative with the accounting anyway. Besides, from my point of view, these kids can account for themselves legitimately as field agents."  
  
"What do you know about field work? You're a pencil pusher! I've been on countless field missions with the X men, X Force, New Mutants, Shield and now the Xavier Institute. You've never been on a mission in your life."  
  
"It's attorney, not pencil pusher, thank you. And for your information X-corp Cleveland has been on a few missions. I even have a code name. I'm The View"  
  
"That's ridiculous. You are named after a Daytime talk show for housewives?"  
  
"I'll let you know, I chose it before the show ever aired. Besides, Mirage, is it any sillier than an Indian being named after a casino?"  
  
"This is all beside the point. You kids go back to your rooms. You are under curfew from now until... Until I decide you aren't"  
  
"Awww come on! You wanted us to act like normal teen-agers. Well here you go! Xi'an, how many times did you guys sneak out on Magneto?" Josh blurted out.  
  
Xi'an hesitated and managed to only stutter before Ed cut in. "That's hardly the point here. I'd have to say that overreaction aside, Dani is right. You guys can't go out without supervision. It's too dangerous."  
  
"Dude, why don't you supervise us?" Victor called out from the back of the room. "You said you could see anything, even in the dark. You can make sure we're not holding up banks or something while making sure we aren't being trailed by sentinels."  
  
"Victor's got a point." David said. "It's a good plan and if we're there, we can keep an eye out for this May girl. Apparently she's guaranteed to be there."  
  
Dani did a double take. "She's what? By who? Who all knows this?"  
  
Cessily chimed in "The whole school knows."  
  
The tall American Indian woman frowned and looked at the group. "I guess you all just volunteered to be field agents." She pointed at Ed. "Especially you, Mr. Big Mouth. Anything happens to these kids tonight and this Indian will pound you into peyote. Got it?" 


	10. Teen Angst and Beer Kegger Part 2 of 2

Chapter 10 - Teen Angst and Beer - Kegger part 2 of 2  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
Outside Mojave, AZ  
  
"I got it sir, ok I know. Look, they replied and said that they just aren't interested in sending their kid here for examination." The broad man in a lab coat continued to talk on the phone. "I know you wanted her here, but they said no." He nodded then said, "OK, Dr. Tudia, you're the boss."  
  
From the other side of the table the other man sat polishing a large gun. "What did he say?"  
  
"He says we have to go pick her up by any means necessary. Says she's a danger to folks around her by her very presence." The broad man replied, hanging up the phone.  
  
The shorter man put down his gun and leaned over the table. "From what I understand, that's pretty much true. Ain't it?"  
  
"I guess so, but I still don't like it." The man in a lab coat walked over to a chrome and black human looking robot and sighed. "Come on, we've got 'ta get Lucy packed up. We're bound for Springfield in the morning."  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
The six teenagers and their reluctant chaperone moved slowly up the gravel path leading to the Woods Hole campground. It had been a bit of a walk so the party was already in full swing by the time they got there. Ed turned to the group. "Ok, you all go and have fun, but don't go crazy or anything. If there is any real problem, don't try to take it on alone and DON'T reveal yourselves as mutants. Just call. If you can't talk, just dial me up and I'll figure it out. From what I understand, the Armstrong girl is a good kid, but she's kind of rebellious. Let's hope that doesn't mean she will break her promise not to use her powers in front of her friends." He took off his dark sun glasses, making Sofia gasp. For the first time the kids got a good look at his eyes. They looked like two jet-black baseballs jutting out front and around the sides of his head. David had always suspected from the strange skills he picked up, that Ed might be able to see behind him. Now he knew. "Oh yea, I'll be watching everything," he smiled knowingly, "but don't let that stop you from having a good time. I'm not a Narc, I'm here to watch your backs. So have fun." He walked off noiselessly into the dark woods with an unreal ease. Graceless and unsteady, he made his way by knowing precisely where to step.  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
Fiddling with her can of Red Bull, May surveyed the crowd milling around the firepit. It was the usual crowd, the jocks, the partiers, the art types, and some of the junior college kids trying to rob the cradle. 'Ok, I know that it's the college kids that bring the beer, but really! What a bunch of losers. Check out the guy with the mullet!'  
  
As she continued to observe the gathering, she occasionally flicked her power on. It was just enough to look at the masses and densities of stuff. When she used her power that way time seemed to slow but as she practiced interpreting her new senses it was getting less and less pronounced.  
  
To expand her knowledge of her newfound senses, she looked at a keg as someone moved it. She could sense the sloshing and the motion of the center of gravity around the keg, but she could not actually see the surface of the liquid. 'I could probably stare at it and see the beer inside, but that would be pushing it. People might notice. I know I'm not supposed to use my powers in public, but it's not like I'm really even doing anything. It's a good thing I thought to wear this baseball hat because the dumb power makes my eyes go totally white. Anyone sees that and they might really freak out!'  
  
"Hey space cadet!" Jannie called out to her, snapping her concentration. Her life long friend waved her over to a perch near a fire burning in the campgrounds fire pit.  
  
Tall, thick and almost black haired, May's friend Jannie was almost a total opposite of the tiny blonde. She struggled up to May pulling the tall burley Ben Kolonowski. "Hey there shorty!" Jannie slured out. She had obviously been to the kegs a few times. "Let me introduce you to my guy. Ben, this is May, maker of mayhem and my best friend."  
  
"Hi Ben, I think we've met before, right?" she said putting out her tiny hand.  
  
Ben was so burley that his teammates on the football team had taken to calling him 'Kodiak.' When he gave her a handshake the difference in their sizes was remarkable. "Yea, once or twice," the incredibly large boy said kindly and softly. "I hear you... you were out for a bit with an injury. How are you holding up?"  
  
Jannie blurted out "She's good! She's not injured though. She's a..." The drunken girl was cut short by the daggers coming from May's eyes. Remembering their earlier conversation, Jannie recovered. "She's a big faker. Just wanted to miss the first history test is all."  
  
Ben grimaced. "Don't remind me. I flunked that one. The new kid blew the curve for everyone."  
  
"So you gave him the beat down didn't you sweetie." Jannie cuddled up to Ben's big arm.  
  
The big football player was uncomfortable and said defensively, "I just wanted to scare the guy. Sure, I was pissed. I pushed him a little, but Brian and Doug were the ones who really beat him up. I don't want any trouble. I got some scouts looking at me for next years college season and don't want to mess it up with fights or failed grades."  
  
Jannie patted his arm. "Ben's going out for tight end for the Buckeyes and maybe even Notre Dame!"  
  
The tiny girl dropped her eyes. She joylessly said, "Oh, yea good luck with that."  
  
Jannie looked into her beer cup and broke the awkward lull. "Well, I'm out!" She chirped, hoping that Ben would take the hint and offer to fill her cup.  
  
He ignored her and turned to May. "Aren't you supposed to be looking around for schools too? With your skills, surely you can get a scholarship."  
  
May looked at him then at Jannie. She saw the reflection of the fire in her friends brown eyes. "I guess I'll have to go get a refill myself!" Jannie turned around and stomped off.  
  
May watched her go and said, "I was, but I'll have to assess my injury. I might have ... lost a couple of things that were important to me when I got ... hurt."  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
Laurie squinched up her face and up ended the red and white beer cup for the second time. One beer had erased any thought of Ed or their mission from her mind, now the second had washed away her normal shyness.  
  
Sitting next to her near the fire, Sofia was still drinking her first cup. Looking sideways, the brunette venezualian girl could see the unmistakable signs of drunkenness. "You know, I have been drinking beer since my cousins first started taking me to football... sorry... soccer games and I do not understand what the big deal is. You mean this party is all about drinking from the keg? Where is the dancing?"  
  
Laurie stared absent-mindedly at josh who was talking to a girl he met at the exchange club meeting. "Oh my god, Sofia, Josh is hot!"  
  
Sofia swiveled her head around. "You need to slow down. How many was that, two? You need to know your limits, me friend."  
  
The blonde girl continued "I mean really hot. Sofia, why doesn't he talk to me?" Her voice cracked into a sloppy whine.  
  
"He talks to you lots. I have seen you two talk." The brunette took another sip of her beer.  
  
"Yea but 'please pass the jam' and 'don't 'cha think System of a Down rocks' isn't exactly meaningful conversation. And I think he's been avoiding me since, since, since the night I helped him heal himself. It's almost like he's afraid of me."  
  
"He is afraid of himself, more like. Boys are like that." Sofia shrugged.  
  
"Oh my God!" The blonde girl put her hands to her face. "You don't think he thinks I've been using my power on him do you?" She stopped for a second, making sure that last sentence got out right, then continued talking into Sofia's ear while leaning on her for support. "Do you think he's avoiding me because he thinks my pheromones are affecting his emotions?"  
  
"What? No. I am sure not. I think he is just liking his return to normal school. I would have to say, now that I am here with good friends like you two, I am enjoying normal school much better than the one my father sent me." Sofia stopped on words more than normal as the alcohol started to affect her speech.  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
Ed watched the scene from his vantage point deep in the woods and felt like a pervert. 'I can see it now, star mutant lawyer molested in jail for being a Peeping Tom. Of course, someone would actually have to catch me, and that is not going to happen.' To his enhanced vision, the dark woods were as light as the brightest day. He could see Laurie drowning that painful awkwardness of hers, and Sofia being a good friend, wading in after her. 'I might have to share my winning hangover recipe with blondie tomorrow.' He smiled and remembered that age, recalling some good times, being bad with his buddies.  
  
Once again he moved around. He examined what his eyes recorded using his photographic memory. While this was his only mutant trick, he did it astonishingly well. It was so effective that he plainly saw what no one else would have detected; a man 20 feet up in a tree sitting in a hidden hunting blind. Once the man showed up on infrared, Ed closely examined his perch and picked him out from his camouflage.  
  
Rocking slowly back and forth to get a complete picture of the scene through the trees, he made sure to stay out of the line of sight of the man. His only one good look at him told him where the man's eyes were inside his costume. There were no weapons on the perch but the presence of this guy bothered him. He was confident that as long as he could keep an eye on this guy, nothing would happen to the kids. His kids, he kept reminding himself.  
  
Turning part of his attention to the party he saw one of his favorite students jumping into action.  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
Victor walked around the fire, his hands occupied with two full beer cups. He walked past Laurie and Sofia, propping each other up on a log bench. Looking around at the party he thought, 'this is what I expected high school to be like. I used to watch the other kids go out to parties like this and I wondered what it would be like. It all seemed so fun and active. Then I grew plates, spikes and a long, sticky prehensile tongue. I often wondered what life would be like if I had never become a mutant, never set foot in or even heard of Xavier's. I never wanted to be special, I just wanted to have fun and this is amazing! Natilie is very cool and her friends are nice. I'm just afraid she'll try to kiss me or something. I may look normal, but inside, I'm still different.' He stopped walking right before going into the group of friends. "Tomorrow," He mumbled to himself. "I'll tell her tomorrow."  
  
Walking up to the group, he handed the beer to Natilie. She smiled warmly and his heart turned to putty. One of her friends was finishing up a joke and they all laughed. As he looked at his date having a good time in the soft light of the fires glow he thought, 'This is what life is supposed to be like. Nat just likes me for me. No one here is special or discriminated against. It's just life. I don't know. I might be happier staying here than going back to Xavier's once this is all over.'  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
As May talked to Ben she would lower her eyes every once in a while. She would slow down the scene by looking at it as masses and gravitational forces using her new power. This was the first real time she could look at people aside from herself using the power. It didn't work with her parents for some reason and she found it extremely amusing. There was a small bit of X-ray vision involved but it mostly showed her what people had in their pockets. She could also see people's insides, which was more than a little gross.  
  
Jannie looked a little pissed when she got back with a full cup for herself. "Well that took forever! I swear! Some people don't know how to pump or something! So what are we talking about?"  
  
"Ben was pointing out some of the exchange students to me. It's a little funny. I know I'm a little out of the loop but you'd think that they would announce that kind of thing in homeroom before the kids showed up!"  
  
Jannie snorted. "Yea, that Blonde girl spends all her free time in the library with the red head girl. For exchange students, you'd think that they would be a bit more outgoing. Social, er. I hear that they have made friends with your buddy Olive and that girl Terri, from the basketball team."  
  
On a whim, May decided to get a closer look at the students Ben had pointed out. She pretended to tie her shoe and while crouched over, she focused her senses and took a good hard look at the gravitational signatures of the new students. The blonde haired boy had a cell phone in his pocket. The black guy had both a cell phone and a note pad. Just when she was thinking that this was lame, she looked at the pull exerted by the red haired stranger at the opposite edge of the party. She was talking to Terri. May knew Terri but had a falling out when she came out as a lesbian. A basketball player, she easily spotted by her six foot two frame.  
  
When she isolated the red haired girl, she found her completely uniform in density. Among all the other students this made her look really spooky and weird. 'This must be a robot or something,' she thought. 'I heard about those sentinel robots they send after mutants, maybe that's one of them! Dad said Ms. Moonstar warned of people wanting to manipulate her and her powers. Maybe she's here to do me some harm. Well I'll show her, it, whatever. I may be new to this, but I'll see how it would like being sent into orbit - around the moon!'  
  
May pulled her shoelaces and stood back up. When Bens friends Brian and Doug joined their conversation, she excused herself and made as straight a line as she could, through the crowd, straight up to Terri and Cessily. "Hi Terri, who is your friend?"  
  
Terri was at a loss, ever since she came out of the closet last year, May had avoided her, though they had been close in elementary school. It was odd to hear from her now. "Uh, Hi May, this is one of the exchange students. We met at the library after school. May, this is..."  
  
"Cessily Kincaid," She stepped forward to shake the tiny girls hand. May looked down at the gloved hand suspiciously and shook it lightly. "Nice to meet you."  
  
May grinned sideways "So where are you exchanged from?" She wanted to finish that with "Mars?" but held her tongue. This being could be dangerous.  
  
"I'm from Boston," the red head replied. Cessily was glad that the image inducer was keeping her concealed because having May be this close and this aggressive was freaking her out.  
  
May peaked into Cessily's cup and said, "Well, you appear to be out. Want to get another?"  
  
Terri, flustered to the point of being birdlike said, "I'm out to. I'll go get it. You want one May?"  
  
"No, sticking with Red Bull, but thanks." She said. 'Yea, thanks for giving us some space here.' Once Terri was gone May quietly cut to the chase. "So what the hell are you? Are you following me?"  
  
Cessily was both relieved and put off by the honesty. "Nice to meet you too. You want to make yourself any more of a target?" She grinned, feigning polite conversation in case anyone was looking. "So, how'd you figure it out?"  
  
"You look like a moving statue to me. No bones, no organs, center of gravity is way too low and variable. That other kid over there has something going on in his throat and his skin is freaky so I know about him too. Who are you people?" She looked around again using her powers and her eyes went white in front of the red heads face.  
  
"We people are trying to keep you from outing yourself like that. And blowing our cover isn't going to help you out one bit. We're Xi'an and Dani's kids. I understand you made quite an impression on them."  
  
This was unexpected. Ms. Moonstar didn't say that she had other students with her. Thinking back on their initial meeting, at some of the unintentionally racist and stupid things she said, May kicked at the snow. "Not one of my better moments. I hope they don't think I'm some sort of hick from the hayseeds."  
  
Cessily was indignant. "Xi'an is my mentor and my friend. She was very hurt by the blatant, ridiculousness of your comment. I don't think you understand the long road you have ahead of you. Such prejudices are not going to be helpful. That 'freak' over there had guts enough to go toe to toe with black ice in Cleveland."  
  
May brightened up. "Really? I heard about that! So are you Push or Soma?"  
  
Cessily laughed in spite of herself as Terri approached with the beer. "Nether, but we can chat later." She looked over and saw Victor and Natalie having some sort of tiff. Natalie put her hand up to touch Victor's head, which gave her a fright. As calmly as she could manage she said, "I think my home-freak needs some assistance. Can you excuse me?" She took the beer and bowed out of the conversation, leaving Terri and May at an uncomfortable silence.  
  
"So how are you doing May? I heard you got hurt and had to stay home last week," Terri ventured.  
  
May nodded "Actually it was two weeks ago. I'm doing ok." She paused "Stir crazy and sore, but I've got a new... trainer to help me over it."  
  
Terri nodded "Good, good. You know, I.." May cut her off  
  
"How's Suzi?" She said sharply, referring to Terri's girlfriend.  
  
Blushing, the tall blonde nodded. "She's good, I think. She... You know, she started at Columbia in the fall."  
  
"Oh. Yea. Um, I forgot about that." No one liked to talk about the situation in New York and now May had clumsily stumbled into it. Remembering Cessily's words she tried to be reassuring. "I'm sure she's ok, you know?"  
  
Walking away from May in barely disguised contempt, Terri mumbled, "Yea, I hear mutants tend to stay away from lesbians."  
  
Feeling strangely ashamed she thought 'Ok, how did I start to suck all of a sudden? I thought being a mutant would be fun.'  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
'Ok, this is officially not fun. I'm NOT having a good time. I'm cold! I know this is necessary and frankly my overly cautious friend over there is giving me the creeps, but damn, I'm still cold.' Ed stuffed his hands into his pockets and picked at the liner of his overcoat.  
  
He examined the last couple of banks of images from his over active eyes and saw the conversation between Cessily and May. 'Well first contact has been made. It looks like the little girl can see through Cessily's disguise. Forge will be so bummed.' He couldn't help but lift a smile as he thought about the guy who installed all that equipment at X-Corp Cleveland. He was a nice guy, but a bit stiff. And he was very sure of his contraptions.  
  
He looked a little further and saw what drew Cessily away from May. 'Saw that coming. Nattilie tried to touch Vic's head. Must have been a little too close for comfort. Poor kid. Poor girl too. She must think she was coming on too strong or something and got turned down. Man, that age is awkward enough without being obviously mutated. At least I was an adult when I had to start hiding my ... gifts.'  
  
Ed dug into his memory and pulled out a few images of this time. He smiled as he viewed his friends and family doing everyday things. Then he picked out a picture that he viewed often. Clare. He remembered the first time he saw his ex wife as perfectly as he remembered everything else he's ever seen since the age of 13. As he often did he looked at it in all the wavelengths he had available at that time. The flush in her cheeks, the quickening of her heartbeat, all betrayed by subtle signs. Looking at this scene always led to the examination of another scene and this time was no exception. The scene was his in the driveway of his now more empty Cleveland home. He looked at Clare's beautiful but sad face through the window as she got in her car and drove away. 'How old would the children be if we had started having babies right away instead of waiting for a time that never came? 11? 13? Almost this age. I talk to David and Laurie like adults, but they are just babies. And more and more, they are my babies.' He flashed a picture of Xi'an into his head. 'This is messed up. The only reason I came along on this trip was to try to spend time with Xi'an, because I thought she was digging me. And now I find myself adopting 7 teenagers.' He smirked at how life can bite you. 'Well, I guess I better call the mom.'  
  
Ed fished in his pocket for the cell phone. He put the ear piece in and dialed Dani with the phone in his pocket. She picked up on the first ring. "Hey, got to keep it short so just listen. Things are going as well as you'd expect. May noticed Cessily right away and they've been talking. Yea, I know. Murphy's law says that she would encounter the bitter and sarcastic kid first. Vic may have given himself away to his girlfriend. Yes, I said girlfriend. Hopefully that won't be as horrible as it could be. David and Josh are talking to other kids and ... well ... it's a keg party and Laurie and Sofia have volunteered to be victims, it seems." The phone yelled in his ear and he grimaced. "I think Sofia will be ok but Laurie is on her way to a painful lesson on how not to drink. They will be fine; you can bitch me out later."  
  
He turned much more serious. "You see, I've got some bad news. There is another person watching this scene from camo 154 feet from me 21 feet up in a tree. This is a perfect sniper angle, but I can't see any weapons. I keep checking him but I'm sure he doesn't know I'm here." The phone squawked back at him excitedly and he cut it off with a whisper. "Well what do you expect me to do? I have him under surveillance and since he obviously did NOT want to be found, just spotting him is one of the worst things I can do to him. I think he's doing exactly what I'm doing, watching the scene and gathering information. Dani, I think I've spotted our monster and there's not a damn thing we can do about it without giving up our ace - without letting him know we're on to him." The phone sighed and fell silent.  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
The two roommates, one blonde, one brunette, both looked at Josh obliviously talking to the short dark haired girl in a purple parka. He talked with his hands, gesturing wildly between sips of beer as the amused girl talked back.  
  
"What a slut" Laurie said taking another long drag off her once again newly refilled beer.  
  
Sofia looked shocked. "No, Misty is very nice. She,... Collects money for the club. Um, Treasurer! Yes. Very nice. We had conversation with Josh after the club broke up about her desire to maybe visit my hometown of Caracas some day. Her Spanish is, a little bad, but understandable."  
  
"I wasn't talking about her," she said through a drunken stupor. "Look at him flaunting himself. 'Look at me, I'm pretty and cool!'" She mimicked some of his more pronounced hand gestures making Sofia snort.  
  
"Ok, I cut you off." Sofia smiled and grabbed for her beer.  
  
Laurie moved her cup away from Sofia and said in her best interpretation of a southern drawl, "you can have it when you pry it from my cold dead fingers!" They looked at each other questioningly then laughed.  
  
"I think I could take you, but it's not worth my effort."  
  
"I wonder if I'm worth the effort for Josh. Maybe that's why he's stopped talking to me."  
  
"And maybe, he does not know how to feel about you. Have you ever asked him... told him how YOU feel?" Sofia poked her in the shoulder making the blonde girl sway slightly.  
  
"Once, when he was in his coma"  
  
"Well that is just great. I am sure he was really receptive." Sofia slured out sarcasim.  
  
"I stayed up all night watching him! He could have said thank you!"  
  
"Yes, he should have. You were a good friend"  
  
Laurie's face became red and filled with conflicting emotions. "I'm going to go kick his ass!"  
  
"Wwww Wait! Laurie!"  
  
As Laurie made an angry, drunkenly swerving line from her perch on the bench to her indented target, Ed gave a short chuckle in the woods. 'Damn, that went south in a hurry. I hope she doesn't hurt him.'  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
Brian Young, Ben Kolinowski, and Doug Furgison came through the crowd around the firepit and approached David. They didn't quite notice that they crossed paths with an angry young blonde emitting angry pheromones. The effect heightened their aggressive attitudes to a hatefull rage.  
  
Shelly, the vice president of the exchange club, was unaware of the impending conflict and continued to talk to David. "So you see, we've been working with Cook County to try to get an exchange group from one of their schools, just for a few weeks, but they said that they only do international students and only if they exchange for a year. I mean, how lame is that?"  
  
Doug cranked in, "About as lame as this goober your talking to Shel." He spit tobacco onto the ground beside him, almost hitting another student.  
  
"Well if it isn't the three stooges," the girl said sassily. "And in uniform no less!"  
  
Brian went right up to the tall black teen, nose-to-nose, and spat out "Yea, whatever. We got some unfinished business here." He grabbed David by the jacket and threw him into a crowd. "Someone is still standing here like he belongs."  
  
Brian half shoved half tossed David into the feet of a crowd of onlookers, making him skid to a stop in the snow on his side and outstretched right hand. As he began to right himself he kneeled away from the attacking boy. 'Wooo!' he thought to himself. 'That had some force behind it. I'm ready this time though. No huge crowd, No ambush. I can turn these guys fighting skills against them.' He relaxed and let his power flow only to realize, 'Oh no, these guys don't have ANY skills. They are just strong and mean.' He looked over his shoulder at the three boys. Backlit by the fire, their advancing silouettes resembled burning nightmares.  
  
He quickly lunged forward trying to run away but the head boy pushed his ass down with the bottom of his boot, sending him sprawling. "Awww now don't tell me you're leaving the party already. I got a present for you BLACK BOY!" He tried to stomp down on David's back but he rolled away.  
  
The hurtfull words snapped David out of his momentary panic. "You are kidding right? You don't like me because I'm black!?" He scooted away as Brian was regaining his footing. "Please tell me you're kidding."  
  
"I don't kid while kicking ass boy. I told you not to come back." The angry boy kept coming at David but then Brian realized that his friends had stopped following. "Come on boys. Let's teach this guy a lesson. He can't just come into our town and show us up like that."  
  
Ben looked at the small but quick Doug, who motioned to the bigger boy to join the fray along with him. The big burley boy fought the aggressive emotions brought on by Laurie's pheromone cloud and said, "Hey, I didn't think this was some kind of race thing. I'm sitting this one out."  
  
"Whatever.", Brian said dismissivly. "Doug?" Doug looked at Ben, shook his head disapprovingly and ran to help the leader boy beat up David.  
  
David was again kneeling as people gathered around the three combatants. He thought fast. 'Hold on, I have fighting skills. Now what do I do with two attackers?' He stood up and faced the two boys with a renewed confidence. They came at him with Brian, the more vicious one who started it all, in the lead by two paces.  
  
The bigoted boy in the lead swung out with a running roundhouse. David dodged the wild blow that left the boy off balance and over extended. The young black mutant pushed himself up on the boy's exposed back and kicked out against the trailing boy. The maneuver pushed Brian to the ground and caught his accomplice, Doug, in the chest with a flat kick. Brian landed on the ground with David on top of him, pushing him into the snow and knocking the wind out of him. The second boy also fell into the snow with David's foot near his face. David had his two hands on Brian but he had one foot on the ground as soon as he landed and immediately pushed himself to a standing position. This pushed his other boot more squarely into Doug's chest. When he noticed Brian was starting to get up, David simply stood on the boys lower back with his free foot. In one swift move, the fight was over.  
  
From the ground Brian looked back at Ben and said "BEN! Get his black ass!"  
  
At the edge of the crowd Ben looked at the situation, looked at David calmly watching him, and declined. "Why don't you use your 'white power' against him, there, David Duke." He turned his back slowly on the fight and mumbled, "Loser."  
  
David Allyne stood triumphant on his attackers. He had used his own skill and intelligence to beat them and he felt pretty good, but he didn't let it go to his head. "I'm going to get off you all. The fights over, understand?"  
  
"I'm going to kick your ass!" Brian shouted from the ground, making many onlookers giggle.  
  
David pleaded with him from above. "Come on man! We're done here. You lost." Laurie's unintentional dose of pherimones was wearing off the boys and their natural emotions started to reassert themselves.  
  
Doug looked at him and nodded. "Ok, get off me." David got off of the two boys and held out a hand to help Doug off the ground. As Doug took David's hand and began to pull himself up, Brian sprung to his feet and raised his fists up. Before he could slam his fists down on David's back, the black mutant bent further over, using Doug as a counter weight and laid out a kick to Brian's exposed stomach.  
  
Once again David began to pull Doug off of the ground while behind him Brian was heaving and retching. David could hear the sound of Brian throwing up accompanied by astonished giggles from the gathered audience. 'I'll smile about that later, but right now I've got to get out of the spotlight.' Doug was breathing heavy as David turned to him with hands up. "We cool? You ok? I'm out, ok? We're done."  
  
Doug nodded. "We're done."  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
Almost as soon as the fight was over, Ed saw what was clearly going to be the end of the party. The Police had been patient enough and they now started up the gravel drive. He noticed that it was ten minutes to two. 'These boys want to close down this party before the end of their shift. I better call Sofia and try to direct traffic. Though these guys are showing restraint, they will hold some kids and they better not be our kids.' He had a momentary flash of Laurie in a holding cell with people freaking out all around her. Then he had the truly disastrous image of Cessily or Victor having their image inducer watches taken away at booking.  
  
Out of the side of his eye, he saw his mystery man slowly lower his blind while still camouflaged. 'That guy is good. If he's our monster, we will not see him coming when he makes his move. I'm all for vigilance but against that? It's pointless. We need intel so we can predict what his first move will be. I can't do anything about it right now, so back to my little fugitives.'  
  
Ed quietly guided Sofia, with Laurie in tow, over to Cessily and Victor. May had been walking once again toward Cessily when the cops first arrived and once she saw them slinking away, she decided to follow them. Josh had gone over to give David a check up after his fight and now the two boys were making their way out of the woods guided by David's acquired familiarity with the terrain.  
  
Once the girls and Victor were out of harms way, he concentrated on Mr. Monster. He'd gotten completely out of the tree and was now moving noiselessly through the forest. To anyone but Ed, he'd blend seamlessly from tree trunk to bush to tree trunk without ever being noticed. Eventually his view was totally blocked by the trees and he looked around.  
  
The cops had rounded up those they really wanted, mostly the college kids and the severely drunk, and were packing up the place to get ready for the next time. As a cold bucket of water was poured over the fire to put it out, Ed thought, 'Ah the cycle of rebellion and angst continues. A few more moments and I'll be alone in the woods to make my humble escape.' He stood for a moment more witnessing the return of the forest creatures to the once noisy location of the party. He was alone with his thoughts. 'Those kids. They are a riot. The differences are plain and they grow and change with each new experience. Fascinating! But they won't get a chance to grow if they have to go up against that guy. Good as they are, they wouldn't stand a chance. I bet if it was what he really wanted to do, I'd have six, No Seven! Seven dead kids here. These young combatants will need some help.' As he started to clumsily but quietly walk out of his post in the forest he mumbled, "It's a good thing they have their lawyer with them and on retainer."  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O  
  
Out of the darkness of an abandoned New York warehouse came the deadliest of sounds. Snikt! Snikt!  
  
Semi automatic pistols received their clips with a Klack! Klack!  
  
tic tic tic the remote trigger for a ruby quartz visor gets tested In the corner and the man doing the testing looked up at their inspiration. "We ready to go?"  
  
Pat Pat Pat In the front of the room a titanium bat solidly patted the palm of a heavily bandaged, claw-like hand. Turning around the resolute but heavily beaten face of Barnell Bohusk (AKA Beak) sneered. He looked at Wolverine, FantomeX and Cyclops awaiting his word. It gave the kid in him a thrill but he knew now was the time to become a Man - an X-Man. "Let's do this."  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O Coming up in the next issues of Gravity Well:  
  
Our final tie in with Grant Morrison's "Planet X" storyline, featuring a most unusual guest appearance. Stay tuned as innocence is lost, tempers flare, and the players start to make their moves in "Gravity Well : So, these three guys walk into a bar..."  
  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O 


	11. The Strange Case of Li Fu jung and ?

Chapter 11 - The Strange Case of Li Fu-Jung and Mr. Xorn and Magneto and Xiao Do and ... 

Three lines formed. Three, crimson lines against pale pink flesh. On a mental command, proteins rearranged their shapes, found new connections and sent out a pulse of psychic energy. Though broadcast, this message was destined to be received by only one.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Driving around Springfield Missouri in a gray passenger van, a frantic Dani was being comforted by Xi'an. "Ed told you they were fine and headed this way. They probably just went for late night pancakes"

"That irresponsible fool should have stayed with them until they were safe and HOME" Dani spat. "It's nearly two thirty anyway. Where are the police in this town?"

Xi'an was taken aback. "Look. You've got to calm down, they are just being kids and Ed totally did the right thing. How damn creepy would it have been if he just popped out of the woods and said 'Ok kids! Time to go!' Nothing suspicious there!"

Dani shook her head "Yea, I know. But I'm worried." She took a right turn onto a more promising street. "I mean, what else can go wrong? Ever since Professor Xavier asked me to check out the two new mutants detected in the mid-west everything has gone down hill. First that Emma Frost bitch-a-like, Esme tricks me into taking you and the kids along for the ride..."

Xi'an rolled her eyes and pouted. Her Asian features made the face even more exaggerated as she goaded, "Gee thanks."

"It's not just you and you know that. The kids just aren't field agents."

"Well they didn't do too bad against your first contact when he turned out to be a juvenile delinquent calling himself 'Black Ice'. Who robs candy stores now 'n days, anyway?"

"Kids. Stupid punk Kids, that's who!" She tightened her grip on the truck-like steering wheel of the van. "It still gets me how self centered that kid was. He would have killed that clerk and even his own friend had Josh not put himself in a coma while healing them. And while we are fixing the mistakes Black Ice made, he escapes! Leaving a public relations nightmare."

Xi'an tried not to notice her friends frustration. "As I said, they didn't do too bad. And it turns out they were safer here than at the school."

"Don't remind me. Seeing the school all bombed out like that on TV..." She confronted the image of her home in flames and shuddered as a chill went down her spine.

The young Cheyenne woman looked over the dashboard lights to the quiet street scene around her. "And now, this place. There's no word from anyone at Xavier's or the whole of New York City for that matter. Still, we rush here because our other powerful new mutant freaks in a public display of power. Only, when we get here we are greeted by the same Purity movement that gave you and Kitty Pryde so much trouble in Chicago."

"Well I for one wish we could take those jerks on. If they hadn't messed with Kitty,... You know, Dani, I really think I could have had something with her. I know she's not into women, but still. She's my friend." She was quiet for a moment then spat, "I owe those bigoted bastards for what they did to her! Outing her as a mutant like that!"

"Well, at least you have Ed! Don't think I haven't noticed you two getting chummy."

"Oh I didn't tell you? He made a play for me while we were watching the Purity guy, Marks, debate earlier."

"And?"

Her pretty Asian eyes dropped to the floor boards. "I dropped him."

"Really? Why? I mean, he rubs me the wrong way, but the kids like him and so do you."

"He's a guy Dani. It just doesn't work for me. I've tried, but it's just not right."

"And it was supposed to be for Kitty?"

"No, but I can dream can't I? Anyway, I feel bad. I have a feeling that he's only on this trip because of me."

"Awfully romantic for a slime ball." Xi'an gave her a look. "Oh come on. He's his own favorite guy!" Dani paused thoughtfully. "He is pretty good with the political stuff, though. That Kendal Marks seems to have quite the movement following him in town. And again, we are on the defensive! Next thing you know, his low rent State Level Mutant Registration Act will have the towns-folk out with torches and pitchforks! And I'm sure it won't take them long to find their way to May Armstrong's door!"

"And you didn't even bring up that freaky thing that happened to David on the plane, picking up the knowledge from some mutant killer who also knew May's address!"

"The address is one thing. We can keep an eye on the house. The kid is another. That's why I want to find them. All of them." She looked up as it started to snow again. "Great. Snow. You know, I should have my head examined. Here we are looking for the kids because Ed thought it would be good to let them go to the same keg party as our new mutant girl, May, right? I mean, come on! A KEG PARTY? I REALLY should have my head examined. So, Ed promises to keep an eye out in the bushes like some mutant peeping tom, thinking that if someone really had wanted to get to May, this would be the most opportune time. Fine, we are finally out in front of something. I didn't want her there alone but, I sent the kids into a party to keep her safe? I'm risking putting all of them in danger! No plan for what they would do should danger arise, of course. And guess what, they were in danger, Xi'an! For all we know that guy in the tree was our mutant killing psychopath! I just wish I knew what was really going on."

"The kids know the risks and are watching out. Remember, they were there to try to help out the Armstrong girl because she was not aware of the danger! Anyway, they've been on their own for what, 20 minutes? You want me to bust out a cerebra and track their mutant signatures? You that paranoid?"

"Yes,.. No! I'm not paranoid! You had a cerebra in the van and we've been sitting here chatting and driving around in circles?"

Xi'an reached into the bag in the back seat and fished out the breadbox-sized device. While setting it up, she mumbled, "You know, this whole den mother thing is not a good look for you. And if you were going to get all paranoid about the kids, you might have gotten their cell phone numbers from Ed before they left." It flashed to life, under lighting Xi'an's sharp Asian features. "They are about a block away," she pointed straight ahead. "probably at that diner."

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Inside the diner May sat uneasily with her new acquaintances. Over the remains of the hastily prepared and eaten food that cluttered the table, the little blonde girl asked, "So, what do you all do, exactly?"

"We go to school." Sofia said a little puzzled. "We are not yet old enough to hold jobs."

David smiled at Sofia's mistake. She looked half asleep and barely holding it together. The older boy said quietly, "You are wondering about our gifts. Well, we're not supposed to talk about that in public. Some one might overhear."

Josh said in his usual brash voice, "Don't you think that's a little paranoid, dude? We totally know about her and she doesn't know us from jack!"

Cessily saw May getting a little freaked by the secrecy and said, "I know. Why don't we play 'If I were an X-man.'? You can say what your power would be if you were a mutant." She looked around the table and seeing no dissenters she started. "Ok, if I were an X-man my power would be to be made of living mercury. I could make any shape with my mercury and I would be snowball fight queen. Ok Josh, your turn."

Josh looked at Cessily smiling encouragingly. He had never seen her smiling encouragingly before so he knew it must be important and to try to keep it light for May. "Right. Now if I were an X-man, I'd be able to heal any wound, like Wolverine. Except, I'd be able to heal other people's wounds as well. This is, of course, the most useful of all powers and would elevate me into the pantheon of X-mendom right next to the guy who can taste things with his hair." He slapped David on the shoulder and said, "How about you." Seeing David wince he added "Oh sorry man."

David rubbed his shoulder. "Well, if you must know, were I an X-man I'd be able to learn anyone's skills and knowledge that was standing close to me. I'd know everything that they know instantly."

May got a bright grin on her face and blurted, half laughing, "Wow, what a lame power!"

The booth erupted in laughter as David looked around stunned and hurt and Laurie continued to snooze into Josh's side. At another table, Jannie turned around to see May hanging out with this strange new crowd of kids. She had heard that they were exchange students but the whole thing didn't seem quite right. 'May would usually either go home after a party goes bust or sit over here with me; especially if we are sitting with half the starting offense of the football team.' She turned around and frowned. May had homed in on HER GUY and now she was avoiding her. She was hurt and angry in her half drunken haze. 'This just isn't right.'

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Ed surveyed the scene before coming out of the forest. While the kids had their disastrous, but rather typical, high school keg party, he had stayed hidden in the forest. Using his mutant gift of enhanced eyesight he watched for anything that might be dangerous to the six kids he was with or to May Armstrong, the new girl they were trying to protect. Now, finding the street deserted, he stepped through the final few yards of wilderness and onto the civilized sidewalk.

'Finally I'm free of those stupid twigs!' He found himself on a nondescript road at the edge of the lot that held the campgrounds. 'Guess I'm walking home. Pretty low end to an active day. I remember when friday night was a diversion And if you found yourself in the woods, it meant that you got lucky.' As he walked along the mostly deserted street, the sky started to spit out the occasional flake of snow. He wiped the first traces of wet snow from his sunglasses and in the now streaked street scene he saw a welcome sight. In the distance, a bar with an "Open" sign in the window called to him. "Looks like it's my lucky day."

He closed the distance with the bar as the snow started to show signs of picking up. On the door was the encouraging sign that said "Bills pull house. Come in as a stranger but leave as a friend." 'Don't mind if I do, Bill.' He thought as he pulled open the heavy wood door and wiped his feet in the vestibule. Opening the second door he instantly surveyed the scene. It was a typical neighborhood tavern with a pool table, darts, TV, slightly overweight bartender and one neighborhood patron at the bar. Ed grimaced at the way his luck turned out. The patron at the bar was Ted Armstrong, May Armstrong's father.

"Come on in." The bartender bellowed to Ed, making Ted turn around. "We're about ready to close up as soon as the boys find that worthless bar back, but I got time to help you warm up."

"A burger and a beer would hit the spot. Thanks." The bartender scribbled Ed's order down and went through a door behind the bar.

Coming back from the kitchen the bartender began to pour a beer. "So what brings you out this late, friend?"

"I was looking for a keg party."

"Ah! Well, you've come to the right place. The boys from the police force use this place to keep an eye out on the campground over yonder. If there's trouble, it'll pass through here. I think it's pretty much done now though with no casualties, thank god." He placed a pint of beer in front of Ed and ran back into the kitchen.

"Thank god." The older man agreed. Ed studied Ted Armstrong's seemingly bored face from the collection of distorted reflections in the hard liquor bottles that lined the wall behind the bar. He knew a second before he heard that the older man was about to speak. "So what's your interest with the party?"

With a shrug Ed said, "I'm keeping an eye out for my kids."

"Ah." Ted took a swallow. "And which ones are yours?"

"Exchange students. I'm a Chaperone."

"Doin' a bang up job." The older man smiled to show he was kidding. "So's there hell to pay or are you going to let it go."

Ed grinned. "We'll probably let it go. They're good kids just trying to have some fun and meet the other students."

"Guess that's why they did the student exchange."

"I guess so. So who are you looking for?"

Ted put down his glass. "My daughter, May. She knows how to keep out of trouble, mostly. Though her grades could be better, I'd just as soon let her run. But we just found out that she's got this condition..." Ted looked over with the look of a man carrying the world and said, "So, I worry. You know what that's like mister?"

Ed thought of the kids and nodded, "I think I'm beginning to."

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

"If I was an X-woman," Sofia started before getting cut off by Victor.

"That's X-man." He corrected.

"Why is it X-MAN? I'm clearly a woman!" She motioned, immodestly pointing out her well-built body.

Victor shrugged his shoulders. "Just is, I guess. Storm's an X-man."

Sofia shook her head. "English. Very strange! Anyway, I would have the power to fly and use the wind. The wind would carry voices from afar."

May, sitting between Cessily and Sofia looked at the tall Argentinean girl and said, "Wow, that's kinda cool. You are a windborne wiretap." Nodding over to the passed out form of Laurie Collins snuggled up to Josh's coat sleeve she asked, "So, what would her power be?"

Josh raised his eyebrows and said, "Right now hers is the power to sleep it off, and I think its working overtime!" Another round of laughter came from the exhausted bunch. Laurie mumbled and waived her hand, which made some of them laugh even more.

"So Victor, what would your power be?" May said to Victor, not noticing that he had stopped laughing and had become quite stiff.

In a slow voice Victor said, "I'd have the power to tell you that Dani and I are waiting outside in the Van. May, I'm glad to see you met the group and that you are all OK."

Cessily rolled her eyes at Victor now that he was possessed by Xi'an's mutant power. "Thanks Xi'an, we're cool. You know, Victor's going to start to take it personally, you using him that way."

Quietly, Victor replied, "Yes, well, He can get over it. While I have an affinity for controlling all of you, built up during our training, I find easiest to control him. Plus he's my height." Victor stood up with a noticeable feminine grace as the kids all started to scoot out from the booth. While the others in the group put on their coats, Victor froze, looked around and said, "Dang man! She did it again didn't she?"

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Three lines deepen into pale flesh, sliding through meat. The mental broadcast is completed and is waiting for dreams to come to the one who would see. The lines can now do as they please. The broadcast is over.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Li Fu-jung shuffled through the streets of Shanghi to Office of Extra Human Affairs. He was nervous. Being called upon by the 'Office' never went well. He had heard of people going to The Office. They often returned traumatized if they returned at all.

He traveled the raised sidewalks up to the intersection overpasses, with their overflow of advertising. In that respect, the Bundt District resembled Japan more than China, so he was told. All he knew was that everything looked different here. He'd also been told that it looked like 18th Century England, but he had no frame of reference for the claim. Such was the life of a teenaged peasant that many experiences were outside his frame of reference.

Sneaking quietly into one of the many brownstones that lined the street, he made his way to the receptionist's desk. Hat in hand he said humbly, "I'm told to ask for Controller 5."

"Well then ask, and be quick about it! Room 230. Lift is behind and to the left, or take the stairs. You are expected, Mr. Fu-jung." The stern woman at the desk never looked up but handed him a paper badge on a string displaying his name and a large red X.

The lift came to an abrupt stop on the second floor, almost knocking down Li's tall slight frame. He shuffled down the hall and found room 230 at its end. He opened the door to find a portly old man dressed in the plain brown suit of the revolution sitting behind a perfectly clean desk. The entire room seemed tan as if years of grime had taken the liberty of painting everything Li could see, including the man. Only the desk was clean.

"Have a seat Mr. Fu-jung." The man pointed his hand at one of the chairs facing him and waited for Li to sit before continuing. "I understand that you have the ability to look like another person. Is this true?" The man crossed his fingers and looked closely at Li's face.

"Yes it is, Mr..." Li probed for his name, but did not get a response. Giving up, he continued nervously. "Yes. I can do men, only men, and only after I study them for a good deal of time, is the mimicry believable."

After an uncomfortable silence the man asked, "Is there anything you can do, short of studying someone? Can you make a copy from a photograph, for instance?"

Li became excited in spite of himself. So few people had ever asked him about his ability, because they were afraid. But this man wanted to know all about it. "I can, but it wouldn't be the same. I must know what the body looks like, for instance, and how he walked, and gestures. People are full of gestures. The talent picks these up and incorporates them into the copy, but it takes time."

"Hmm!" The man looked at Li, then at his file drawer. "You are familiar with the teachings of Mao, are you not?"

"Yes, of course. He was the greatest mind of all time."

"He taught that we must give to the country the talents that we have so that we may take from the country that which sustains us. You have an exceptional, but underutilized ability, Li. I would like to train you to be able to copy someone quickly and convincingly enough. I believe that instead of observing the target of the mimicry, you can observe people who know the person best. You can then adjust yourself until their body language tells you that they believe you. In other words, get the copy working, then fine tune it to fit the people who would ask questions. We offer this opportunity to expand your talent so that you may help your country by copying a specific man. You are familiar with the critical and flamboyant Mayor of Beijing?"

"As familiar as one is able and still have time to tend the farm."

"Well", the man paused then turned and looked directly at Li with cold eyes. "We would like you to impersonate him. You would then take your orders from us as to what to do and say. Do you think you can handle that?"

Li shook slightly, overwhelmed with it all. "I guess so, when do I meet him?"

"Ah that is why you need the training, for you see," the man spread the contents of the folder on his desk, including a grizzly photograph. "He is already dead."

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Three lines deepen. Driven by muscle and rage, they slide softly through crimson, parting the pale pink background, leaving it behind.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

"We would like you to go undercover again, Li."

In an Armani suit and sunglasses the Chinese man in his mid twenties replied distractedly. "I don't suppose you have heard of this western custom called a vacation, have you? I hear that it is what one is usually given by their employer after a hard year-long assignment. Of course, you might have thought my current posting in gods dump-no where might count. I, on the other hand, was really thinking London, or maybe San Francisco."

The controller sighed. "You have become soft and corrupted by the influence of the infidels. I guess it is the risk someone with your particular talents runs. Your time acting like that Italian counter-revolutionary drug runner has not helped your attitude, Li." The gray haired controller paced his spartan office behind the seated Li. "We sent you to Chengdu so that might once again become Chinese and reestablish your bond with the people."

"The people smell, quite frankly. The people are also frighteningly poor compared to the rest of the world. Though I knew you would once again conscript me to dangerous service, honestly, I was looking forward to visiting Shanghi. At least here pigs and cattle do not run loose in the streets."

"No and being able to get Cocaine in a big city like this doesn't hurt either does it? Let's not forget the other reasons we had for sending you to, as your report put it, 'live in filth.' Your addiction to the western vices is simply unacceptable and we had hoped that you could shake it off, given the pure air of the land from which Taoism first came to our forefathers. Apparently things are more complex than we had believed." The short old man in revolutionary garb shot Li a glance that made him sweat behind his sunglasses. He knew his life was in the old mans hands. "Nonetheless, we have need of your talents and must reassign you. We simply have no alternative."

Li swallowed hard but kept his disinterested front intact. "So you would have me live so that I may continue to spy for the revolution?"

"The country is generous with those who give to it as much as you have. The parasite you conspired with has contributed to the lives of the people with his death. You're life will be your contribution and your service will make amends for your transgressions." A manila envelope slapped down on the desk in front of him. "Study that. You will be him." The order was firm. There was no opening for further discussion. "He has already been contacted by the mutant Fabian Cortez to join some sort of rogue army. We want a man on the inside."

"You know I'll need a few days to get this right. What if the real guy makes contact with this Cortez while I'm studying?"

"Don't worry. He won't." The controller looked past his own icy reflection to see the skyline of Shanghi. "We made sure of that."

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Flat, doughnut shaped cells slide along veins. Suddenly an intruder appears in the vein's flow. It is the tip of a metal wedge, initially seen just barely blocking the flow, then eclipsing the vein completely, cutting the hapless doughnut shaped cell cleanly in two on it's passing.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

"Do Wolverine, Xiao!"

The young, overweight form of the Chinese Mutant Xiao Do was backlit by a three-pained stained glass window in this small chapel. The gold studded lectern had been moved aside, making a makeshift stage for his performance. Turning around, Li transformed from the fat disguise of Xiao Do, to the fearsome shape of Wolverine. "Who says I do requests bob?"

The young mutants chuckled, dressed in their blue uniforms with a large red V on the chest. One with bright markings on her face said "Ok How about Storm?"

Another neophyte gave her a quick punch. "You know he can only do guys. Hey, how about Northstar?"

He changed quickly into Groucho Marx, complete with grease paint eyebrows and mustache. "Ok, but that is dangerously close to being a girl, if you know what I mean." They all laughed as he turned into Northstar and said in a homosexually affected French Canadian accent "You know, without my costume I could be any pretty boy French ski instructor. It is a good thing I am with the low powered team Alpha Flight or the fact that I am a loser with easily countered and generic powers would be so very obvious to everyone."

They all laughed as he mocked the speedster. Ever since he dug into Cortez's Data bank of known mutants, he has been amusing his fellow young Acolytes with these shows of his powers. He found that he enjoyed being the center of attention and sometimes marveled at how far he had come from that peasant boy that shuffled into the controller's office years ago.

He had been around the world as an agent of China's secret spy organization The Office of Extra Human Affairs. Since his first assignments infiltrating democratically inclined groups in Beijing, He had single handedly stopped many of the western organized crime syndicates from establishing a foothold on the Chinese soil or people. He had set up many industrial espionage operations in the western countries and in South America to gather knowledge needed to grow China into the dragon it should be. Though he had been many places and in some tough positions, but this had to be the toughest.

What had seemed to the bosses in Shanghi to be a rogue army under the leadership of Fabian Cortez was really turning out to be a psudo-religious group dedicated to the Martyred mutant terrorist Magneto. All were devoted to the late 'Master of Magnetism' but some scoffed at the idea that Fabian Cortez truly spoke for him. Li himself had noticed that Magneto's writings were often less militaristic and more utopian than Cortez's supposed divine mandates. And here he was, a Judas among the believers, under deep cover.

Though in danger of discovery at all times, Li found that this was an excellent opportunity to expand the number of faces he could effectively impersonate. He didn't mind that he had to constantly be disguised as Xiao Do, and began to actually like the squat boy that provided him his alias.

Sometimes he wondered if it was right, taking the place of someone, even if that someone was dead. Then again, it was the government's decision, not his.  
Now in the guise of Richard Nixon he said "So, do you have anything further for me or can I go and play with checkers now?"

"Do Magneto." A voice from the back of the room made everyone turn around in startled silence. The Acolyte Cortez, The one who would speak with Magneto's voice, leaned against the doorway with his arms folded across his chest.

Li shifted to the fat, friendly form of Xiao Do and said humbly, "I do not impersonate Magneto out of respect. Our lord Magneto is above the amusements of clowns and children."

"But you would impersonate, say, me for instance?" Cortez made his way as regally as he could but he seemed a pale imitation of a true leader.

This impression was not lost on Li for he was, in fact, far more experienced inside than the form of Xiao Do would betray. His playful side got the better of him as he tapped into the distrust he had observed growing in the rest of the Acolytes. He shifted into Groucho Marx again and said "Only if you let me take a shower afterwards, I might feel a little slimy."

"You would dare mock me?" He strode through the parting crowd.

Li shifted to the form of a monk he knew from one of his previous assignments. "Apologies Sir,.." He shifted again to take the form of Rodney Dangerfield. "But you named me the Mocking Bird, I'm just doing my part to live up to the name. A little Respect here! Ack!"

Fabian Cortez grabbed Li by the throat and lifted him from the ground. "You should hold your tongue Jester. I speak for our Lord Magneto and am your better. As such I am the one deserving of respect."

Li was momentarily caught off guard but then shifted to the size and shape of the armored Colossus. Cortez's hand could no longer maintain its painful grip. "I was under the impression that in Lord Magneto's realm that we were all equal. Much like in mother Russia, Torvich!"

Wham!!! A mighty blow met with the midsection of the mock-Colossus and Li went crumbling to the ground. It took all his training not to revert to his own neutral appearance but to shift back to Xiao Do. Towering over the crumpled figure, Cortez pulled back his fist and recomposed himself into his failing approximation of regal stature. The audience of neophytes drew to the perimeter of the room in fear and awe. "You of all people should know that in communism, no matter how perfect, some people are more 'Equal' than others." Turning to the assembled group he said, "If you could please leave us, I have business to discuss with Young Mr. Do." The others walked to the arched door immaculately crafted into the stone wall and filed out of the chapel.

"Now, Mr. Do, it is really too bad that you do not actually possess the armor or strength of Colossus, is it not? For if you did, you wouldn't feel like throwing up now." From the floor, Li gasped for air. "Don't feel much like talking either? I understand. Truth be told, I understand more about you than you know, Mr. Do." Li's eyes went wide. He had waited to be discovered for two years now, living among telepaths and super-sensorial mutants, and never had. But now the time seemed to be at hand. What would Cortez do?

"Yes, I understand that you are lazy, Mr. Do." Fortunately Cortez failed to fully realize events even as he was planning to manipulate them to his own ends. If Li hadn't had the wind knocked out of him, he would have sighed in relief. "You use your powers to do parlor tricks but you could do much more. See, I not only have the ability to amplify a mutants powers, through exposure to a mutant, I can see the pathways that the mutants power can mutate. You, Mr. Do, are on a very low rung with your powers. For instance, did you know that you are, in fact, possibly the most powerful mutant here? You only use a hint of that energy when you switch from one form to another."

Li regained some of his composure and leaned against the lectern. Cortez had wandered around the room while he was rattling on and was now a more comfortable distance away. "So what?" He managed to choke out. "I shift, I monitor my audience to make sure they are buying it, I adjust if need be, that's it, that's all I got." He conveniently left out the part of his power that collects volumes of information from people's body language. A side effect he had honed over many years spent in the field.

"Ah, but you could be much more. Think, boy. What is a perfect copy of a mutant?"

Sparks went off in Li's brain. "To copy their abilities?"

"You are starting to see. And only I can help you get over the hurtle that is limiting your greatly expanded use of your powers."

"At what price? There is always a catch, especially with the likes of you. What would you want in return?" Li braced for the other side of this devil's pact.

Cortez straightened at the straight forward slight, but knew he was not dealing with a fool. "You must help me control of the Acolytes. There are those who doubt my leadership and a shape changer can aid me. You can help me eliminate my enemies while keeping the good will of the rest of the flock. Once in line, The Acolytes will help me cement my power in the larger game with a group called the Upstarts. If I control the Upstarts, a group of even more powerful mutants with vast resources at their disposal, I could remake the world as Magneto had prophesized. Would you join me in reshaping the world?" He smirked.

Li's mind buzzed with the implications of these statements. No doubt Cortez would fail to pull off his plan in any number of ways, so the threat of having this pompous, power mad, ass as a supreme ruler was nothing more than hot air. 'But who are these Upstarts? Is Cortez in a larger game than just collecting the disaffected into Magneto's Martyrs? And to have the powers of other mutants, even If it was a copy of the effects of those powers, now that was something worth exploring. For the greater glory of China, of course.' Holding up his hand he said, "Throw in helping me off the floor and you have yourself a deal."

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

One by one by one, three lines meet with bone, at first only scratching the surface, then cracking at the point of the attack. Bone fractures leaving a chasm quickly filled with metal for the lines. There is a sound to the lines now, the sound of tectonic plates moving against one another at a fault. It is the sound of the world changing.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

When Fabian Cortez laid his hands on Li and used his mutant power to augment mutant powers, the rush of endless faces, gestures and even mutant abilities went to his head harder than any drug kick he had experienced in his life. His body warbled through a number of different people before he settled back on Xiao Do.

"hooooOOOOOO Goooooooooooooddddddd.." He just sat in the extraordinary feeling of power for a moment. His eyes wandered around the small chapel where just days ago, he had made his pact with Cortez.

Slap! Cortez slapped him across the face and he awoke to hear the man screaming at him. "I give you more power than you have ever had in your life and you sit there like it's a Saturday night buzz. You sicken me! Get up and use those powers like you should. Like you were born to! Come Xiao, become Peter Rasputin!"

Li concentrated on everything he knew about the X-men's strong man and channeled that through his body, letting it wash over him in blankets of white hot light. He could feel the change. It was almost painful but it felt so good! The itch that he didn't even know existed moments before was being scratched and soothed in this ultimate expression of his power. When he finally calmed down he opened his eyes and saw Cortez looking rather small.

"You did it." It almost sounded like a question. "Now to see if it is as good as the real thing." The red haired mutant pulled a semiautomatic pistol from his shoulder holster and fired it at the shape shifter's head. Out of reflex, Li brought his crossed arms up in front of his face and was astonished to hear the bullet ricochet off of metal instead of the sound of his own death. He looked at his hands and found the metal gauntlets of Colossus. He ran to find a mirror and looked at himself. "I gave you the power Xiao, but you made yourself into a fine approximation of Colossus. Now let's try someone else."

"Oh yes, please!" Li reverted to Xiao Do, his face sincere in it's blind enthusiasm to repeat the experience. "Please, lets do more!"

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Metal was never meant to be where metal now was, sliding gracefully and horribly through meat, It's path lubricated by slippery blood.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Warning - Atmospheric Decompression in Progress - Warning 

Sirens blared as smoke filled hallways rang with panic and fear. "Let's go, Let's go! Into the life boats!"

"This is my home! It's the only home I know! I can't believe the X-men would destroy it like this!"

"The X-men would see us all dead, Static. Defy their evil by surviving. To the life boats!"

"Wait! Where's Xiao?"

"He didn't make it. I saw him all burnt up in the power room. Come on, save yourselves!"

They hurried into the cramped capsule, strapped in and blasted away from the exploding hulk of Avalon.

On board, the horribly burned figure of Xiao Do stepped out of the main power generation room and into the smoke filled hall. Slowly the features filled in and ceased to be burnt and Li Fu-jung, for the first time ever, made his true appearance known to this station space station.

He ripped off the rest of the half burned Acolyte uniform and made his way to the nearest computer station. He looked at his reflection in the computer screen. This was a face he hadn't seen in a very long time and he took a moment to get reacquainted with it. His hair, it seemed, had turned a little gray around the temples and it reminded him of his father.

He changed into the silver haired form of Magneto. He had studied the master of Magnetism up close during his time at the Avalon station and he knew the man extremely well. He had talked to him at great length about his world-view, his past and even his powers. He had also studied the station's systems and had planned for this day. In a voice that matched his current face Li said, "Avalon computer, who is left alive on this station?"

Only you, Magneto.

He noted the irony that Magneto's own computer was fooled by his impersonation. "Is there enough intact to initiate any plan coded one-two-nine-end?"

There is enough power to initiate plan code one-two-nine-x. Initiate?

Inside Magneto's body, Li smiled, "Yes, please. Authorization: Li Fu-Jung."

Initiating

A blazing glowing light surrounded Avalon and shrapnel filled the space in all directions. There were no casualties from this silent explosion though many were in the escape pods. All that saw it looked back where they had come from and found only an empty space. Avalon had seemingly been blown to smithereens.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Bones splinter and separate. Electricity stops coursing through its bone tunnel for lack of a place to go. Three lines continue their relentless way through gristle and fiber, flesh and blood.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

"So you were able to survive by becoming a replica of Magneto. You used his magnetic powers to safely travel back to earth. That was quite fortunate indeed!"

Back in the controller's plain office, which hadn't changed in the years he'd been away, Li gave his report. "Yes, quite. Though I'm afraid I had to leave the persona of Xiao Do to die on that station."

The controller scoffed. "A pawn. He served his country well, but in the end Xiao was a pawn. Surely, you understand that, Li. You have been in this game for a while now, seen players come and go. Sometimes you need to sacrifice in order to gain. Xiao, if he was a true brother in the revolution, would have understood that. China is better today for his part in our plan and for that the people have found in him a hero of the revolution."

"As far as the people are concerned, he died a supporting an international terrorist on an asteroid miles away from China. Somehow, I can't help but be skeptical that Xiao would be happy with the way that I spent his life." Li, dressed in cotton pants and a sweatshirt, sat in the simple wooden chair and shook his head in disbelief. "Cortez too saw this as a game. He even had a man called the Game Master helping him control his mad competition with the other Upstarts. But I can't believe that this is all just a game and that Xiao's was a life that was meant to be used as currency. Cortez wanted to use Xiao to impersonate rebel Acolytes to make them seem untrustworthy and evil. He would banish them to harden his control the Acolytes and gain favor in the Upstarts sick little game. A stupid plan, but Cortez was a foolish man. You wanted me to impersonate Xiao to control Cortez. A much better plan, but I still ask, is that all there is? Is this all just a game?"

The controller turned around with a quizzical look on his face. "Of course it's all just a game. You know Li? In all the years we've known each other I've never thought of you as being such a philosopher. I guess it comes with age."

Li slumped in the chair. He took solace in that he had, in fact, saved a large part of Avalon and had managed to get the cloaking devices working. He had examined the situation in Avalon and had correctly assumed that no station this size would be allowed to remain in place. Either rival super human factions or a coalition of governments would conspire to claim such a prize. And now it was his little secret. If this was to be a game, at least he had himself a chip. He felt a little bad, robbing China of such a prize, but the land of his birth was starting to seem like less of a worthy recipient of such a gift.

The Controller went to the door of his office and motioned out into the hall. "Well then, since you have become so ... contemplative, you might even find yourself enjoying this next assignment. Would you like to meet the person we would like you to duplicate for us next?"

"What? Are we on our way to the morgue so soon? Am I to make another dead man walk, Controller number 5? How stupid! If, as you say, you have known me for so long, why is it that I still don't know your name?"

"You should know by now that I have no name. Your new mission is simple. You are to be a duplicate of one of the Office's hidden treasures. His original location was compromised by the meddlesome Charles Xavier, so we would like you to hold that place while we re-hide him. So, if you would, Li Fu-jung, meet Mr. Xorn."

A large man with his head sealed in a metal mask and wrapped around the torso with large chains came in accompanied by two guards. When he spoke, it was directly into his brain. "Good day to you, Brother. I am told we have much to discuss."

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Taught rubber bands of flesh strain against the physical forces stretching them. One by one they find that they are not up to the task.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Xorn and Xorn looked at each other through identically crafted metal masks. They sat in the relative comfort of the prison that had been crafted for them. Of course, there were two such prisons now, since Li Fu-jung had found the ability to ignite the star inside his head. Their handlers had given them two different colored tunics. One was Red while the other one wore white.

The White robed Xorn spoke. "I feel it. They have come again and it is for the last time. It is a shame that the time has come for us to separate, Brother, for when I look at you and talk to you, I feel as if I am talking into a mirror. I find the experience to be unique and quite pleasant."

"I am told that it is what is best for all. For the country that gave us life and it's people."

"Do you truly believe that?"

"I do not know what to believe brother, but they have gone to significant lengths to make it so and I would assume that the reasoning behind our meeting and departing must be as they say." The Red robed Xorn replied without moving at all, just like his white robed counterpart.

"Yes, many things are said. But truths are difficult to come by even under the best of circumstances."

"These circumstances are what we have. Since they are far from ideal, I see your point. But these people mean well. They would see great things come about from the power, if they did not fear it so."

The Xorn in white spoke in turn as if they were playing ping-pong with ideas. This was their only pastime in this rock-hewn cell they were housed in. "And it is fear that has the government going to such great lengths to hide us from the world my brother."

"Yet they would also expose us to the world, my brother. At times I find the logic, contradictory"

"They would hide us in plain sight. A prince once desired to steal the North Star. As a small boy he climbed tall trees with a net to snatch it from the sky. After many hard falls he tried climbing mountains. Even at the highest peak, the star eluded his grasp. He was determined to at least grab a piece of the star to have as his very own.

"One day a beautiful princess saw the prince and desired his heart. She flirted and fawned, but all for naught for the prince's head was in the stars. So she fashioned a plan. She said that she had found a way to capture the star. Overjoyed, he asked her to show him, so she plucked the sapphire she had stowed in a low branch from it's hiding place and showed it to him. It shined like the North Star and was cool and calming like the star's rays so he accepted that she now had what he had always wanted and never left her side."

The red Xorn thought for a moment then spoke. "That is a fine fable my brother, but what of the prince? He had been duped."

"Indeed."

Silence filled the room. Nothing but a steady drip and the sounds of birds chirping disturbed the meditations of the two identical beings. Before too long, a door opened on the red and white Xorns. A man in a plain dark gray suit walked in. "Mr. Fu-jung. I've come to take you to Xorn's former home to proceed with your mission."

Both Xorns sat motionless. The one in the red spoke. "I will miss you my brother. Be well."

"I will miss you as well, even as I take you with me in my heart, my brother." The white Xorn slowly got up and turned to the door.

The still seated Xorn grabbed the other's tunic. Looking up he cautioned, "Be wary my brother. Though your body is healthy, your soul has many scars. Though I have tried, I was not able to soothe all the wounds you harbor from your days on the knife blade between truth and deception. Be wary also of your weaknesses. I worry for you brother, I worry for you and the Me you would be. Your very nature is to stay as you are where as mine is to grow and change. You cannot follow this path of constant change as you are, yet you must in order to be me. This will be difficult for you and I have no answers. Hopefully you will find the answers yourself. Be well." He slowly let go and the white robed Xorn followed the operative to the waiting truck.

The truck had a boxcar mounted on the back with a chair inside where Xorn was to sit. Before long, the boxcar was moved from the truck onto a waiting train chassis for the long trip across country. The method of travel suited Li. During his time with the Acolytes, he had mastered several different and challenging mutations. One of them was particularly useful now. A Neophyte named Static had the ability to transmit himself over conductive metal wires as a sentient electronic pulse. He now had a need to put that talent to the test.

Li shifted form inside the iron mask of Xorn. He quickly became Static and jumped completely out of the Shell Xorn wrapped himself in and let the metal train components carry his current to a railway switch. The switch was connected to a phone line and He traversed the endless maze of conductive materials that now circle the globe. He made his way to a run down New York apartment and out of a generic black phone.

The place was dingy and smelled of sweat. He was naked and alone, but from his previous conversations with this contact he was sure he was in the right place. The phone system was like a well-marked interstate for Static's power. He looked around and finding jogging outfit, gave it the sniff test and put it on.

"Beggars can't be choosers, my friend." A voice from nowhere advised. "I do hope you have an invite. This is a very exclusive address."

"Yes, this is Li. I am not accustomed to talking to the air, Vanisher. Can you please show yourself? I have the access codes to the property you wanted."

"Ah, Mr. Fu-jung." In one corner of the apartment an older bald man with a long, pointy face appeared from thin air. He was seated at a plain wooden table where he had clearly been playing solitare with cards. "I was beginning to believe that our arrangement had fallen through."

Li looked around as if someone else might miraculously appear as the Vanisher had, but no one did. He came over and sat at the table. "They reassigned me at the first possible opportunity and I had a hard time getting away. My apologies. Has AIM made the proper deposits in the accounts?"

He picked up the cards and shuffled them absentmindedly. "They were awaiting word, my good man. As I remember, you were late in Oslo when we did that deal back in the 80's very much like you are late now. That deal did not go very well for me. Those people thought I had ratted them out, never suspecting their own leader. I know you say that you are now a free agent, but tell me, can I trust you this time?"

"No."

The Vanisher hesitated then smiled. "Good enough, then. Boy scouts always make for boring business. I was to give you the account codes when you gave them the necessary information to find what they seek. Being able to deactivate the security systems would also come in handy for them, don't you think?"

Li smirked. "What, you think I was going to leave them a present? Like in Buenos Aries? I tell you I've reformed. Though it would be nice to see how smart these kids really are. For weapons makers, AIM really are quite full of themselves. But I have no need to make an enemy of them."

"Good to hear." He motioned to the cards. "Game of gin, for old time sake?"

Li stood up and shook his head. "No, thanks. I've found that I've lost my appetite for games of chance. I prefer to find ways to stack the deck."

"Is that what this little deal is about?" The bald man arched his eyebrow and said, "You making some moves now that you've decided to go solo?"

Li was surprised. "Since when have you cared about people's motivations, Vanisher? Don't tell me that you have grown a conscience or, worse yet, a moral fiber since I've been gone these last few years! You're American Lassies fare attitude and willingness to make any deal was a constant one could rely upon."

"Merely curious, my old friend. You know, of all the scoundrels we associated with, I always envied you. You always had the ability to be anyone you set your mind to be, where as I could only be nothing at all."

Li looked down and thought of Xiao. "You'd be surprised to find how similar those two things are some time."

"And now who has grown a conscience?" Li looked up to find the Vanisher searching his face.

"If you must know, I'm making my assets more liquid, is all. Sitting in an asteroid, scheming just isn't my style. So, back to the matter at hand. You've got my money right?"

The Vanisher nodded.

"Good." He became partially energized in blue flame. "I am transmitting the codes now. I trust they will enjoy your new home away from home. Asteroid M is always a lovely vacation spot, but I found it to be the death of me."

The Vanisher grinned. He got up and checked his computer. The money was sent. "Very good. Paid in full. You know, I don't think I've ever talked to you as, well, YOU for any length of time."

"That's because I haven't been just me for quite some time." His business done, Li got up and walked around. He noticed that on the coffee table in the other room there was a familiar sight from days past. "You have cocaine? You know, I think I might like some if you don't mind."

"You just made me a rich man. Oh I'm sorry, A richer man. Please, indulge yourself. I would offer you another commodity that I have recently started trafficking in, but it only works on humans."

"SNNNNNNNort!" "Really? What does it do?"

"It lets them be mutants. Isn't that a kick? We spend all this time fighting with the humans just to be who we are and they want to be us for a good time on a Friday night!"

"But I thought you don't care what humans and mutants do to each other."

"I don't. I could care less as long as I have a piece of the business. I do find the folly and irony entertaining, however."

"SNNNNNNNT! I suppose you would. Thanks for the lines. Too bad, really that I can't take it with me."

He turned into blue static and raced away through the phone lines, leaving the jogging suit behind.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Three lines encroach upon pale flesh from the inside out. They take with them pain, confusion and terrible longing. In the end, only the madness survives their passing.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Li walked down the halls of Xavier's school as the new X-man and instructor Xorn. In the weeks since Xavier went public with the school's true purpose, scores of new students had arrived, making the halls buzz with the energy of a hundred anxious teenagers.

The experience of being Xorn, a living being and a highly spiritually evolved one at that, gave Li new optimism about life. He had wondered if he could ever truly be free of the prejudgments that had ruled his life as a field operative. While he realized that according to the Chinese, he was still a planted agent, He had considered himself rogue for a while.

So as he walked through the chaos of the hallway, he contemplated why he continued to be Xorn. He was sure that Charles Xavier and his people would protect him and not judge him, as so many others would. In a way, this made the decision to unmask even more difficult. These were his friends, his teammates, his people. He had fought with them against Cassandra Nova and cried with them over the enormous loss of life at the mutant homeland of Genosha at her hands. He didn't want to confess to lying to them, especially considering that he was certain that they would be understanding and kind. He did not feel worthy.

Bump! Scatter! Thump! Li was so lost in contemplation that he failed to watch where he was going and bumped into a quartet of blonde, slim, identical girls called the Stepford Coocoos. Though only one of them fell to the floor, they all said "OW!"

The unfortunate girl that fell said, "Does that mask of yours allow you to see, Mr. Xorn?" The others quickly said in unison "You ran right into us!" The girls were all helping to collect the scattered contents of their fallen sisters bag.

Squatting down he said, "I'm so very sorry children. Please, let me,.. help?" He spotted what looked to be an asthma inhaler, but it was black. The girl on the ground snatched it from him as he went to pick it up. Standing up he said, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to see that, Miss." He held out his hand to the girl

Instead of handing over the inhaler, she grabbed the hand and pulled herself up. "I don't think you need this, but thanks for helping me up." Xorn could feel her attempting to tap into his mind to make him disinterested.

"You fail to understand the situation. Your mind powers don't work on one who has a star for a brain. Never the less, expect to be punished for trying. Please give me the inhaler." She sighed and handed over the black plastic device. "Unless you girls are involved in this too, I would recommend that you go to class." He turned to the girl in trouble. "What is your name?"

"Esme", she sassed.

He said to the still hovering girls, "Esme and I appear to have some things to discuss."

The two sat in Mr. Xorn's classroom. Xorn sat behind the front desk as Esme looked down at the floor past the desk built into her chair. The metal masked mutant toyed with the kick inhaler, scooting it between his hands on the desk. For ten minutes neither one talked.

"Mr. Xorn?" Esme finally found her voice and it was a crisp, cold and articulate imitation of her mentor, Emma Frost. "Are we going to sit here all day? I don't know if you eat, but I'll need to get dinner eventually." She looked at Mr. Xorn for a long moment then added, "And besides, you can't keep me here."

Since getting to know Emma Frost, Xorn had noticed her ability to attack most effectively when she was at her weakest. Though Esme was on her way, she was clearly not as accomplished at this tactic. "You are mistaken. I can keep you as long as I wish." He laced his fingers and bounced his thumbs against the mask where his lower lip would be. "You are free to leave at any time. Of course, this stays here." He quickly pointed to the inhaler then re-laced his fingers. "Now, I assure you, anything that happens in this room stays here. But, if you walk out the door, it becomes a mater of school policy. Since the unfortunate death of Quentin and your sister Selphie, This drug, Kick, has been expressly forbidden. Which makes me wonder why you, of all people, would use it."

The two sat in silence once more. On the hour classes let out and the quiet classroom was filled with the echo of the bustling hallway. Mr. Xorn could hear his class trying to get in the locked classroom door. The muffled sounds of Beak wondering what to do. The sharp sounds of Angel telling him what to do and the laugh of Basilisk to whatever was said could be heard distinctly through the closed door. After 10 minutes classes had begun and the hall was silent once again.

Esme looked at Mr. Xorn. "I bet you think it's quiet in here."

"It was, but now that we are talking, it isn't. What do you hear when we are not talking that isn't quiet, Esme?"

"I hear my Sisters, the other Coocoos. I hear them and everything they hear and every thought they have and the thoughts of people around them that they are looking into expressly and I hear thoughts of other people that we haven't been able to mask out. You ask me why I would run the risk of damaging myself with that crap, well I'll tell you. That crap gives me the power to shut my sisters out for a while. That stuff lets me be my own person and not a quarter of the collective. Without that extra power, there is no ME to risk damaging." She began to cry. "You have no idea what it's like to not know where you stop and someone else begins. That is what I get out of Kick. I get ME!"

Mr. Xorn held the inhaler between his thumb and index finger. "You need control. We can set something up with you and your sisters that will help,..."

"You haven't been listening." She cut him off, her face red. "They LIKE it this way! They want me to stop pulling at them to change! Without the power, I become a slave to the collective will. I can't do that! I won't! It's not fair!" She broke down and started crying into the chairs arm desk. Her sudden tumble from being cold and distant to shamelessly weeping made the blonde girl look all the more vulnerable.

"Esme, I'm going to help you. After diner tomorrow, I'd like to see you here. We will try to see what we can do about giving you more independence from the Coocoo collective. I am going to keep this", He held up the inhaler, "and analyze it. If it is safe and only if it is safe, we may get more of it for your treatment." He straightened up and said, "If you find this unacceptable, I will be more than happy to discuss the situation with the Professor, but he is rather close minded about kick after what happened. I would just as soon keep this between us."

Esme sat up and sniffled. "Ok. I'll come back." Without looking at Xorn she scampered out of the room.

While Li was filled with thoughts that approximated those of the true Xorn, He definitely had his own thoughts. In this situation, the combination of Li and Xorn wound up behaving differently than the true Xorn would have, to be sure. But Li was still in control and he thought this was the best way to handle things. No one knew the effects of drugs better than a drug user. Where as Xorn would have prescribed meditation and referred this to the Professor, Li wanted to know how well this stuff worked.

After classes let out that next day he was once again in his office, this time waiting for Esme. He had analyzed the Kick to the best of his abilities and found that, for the most part, it was adrenalin and amphetamines. Though he knew it was wrong, he still wanted to try it. His experiences with the power booster Fabian Cortez made him anxious to once again, feel the feelings he felt during those sessions. It was a dark and human thing inside him that made him reach for the Kick.

Once the decision was made, follow through happened as quickly as falling down. He realized that he couldn't use the inhaler as Xorn because of Xorn's unique physiology. Having a star for a brain left little room for a mouth. Li changed into Magneto so that when the initial rush hit him, the power that was amplified was not his own but the more stimulating and primal power of magnetism. It was a quick decision that would cost Li dearly. With one huff and one inhale the die was cast. Li knew he was in trouble immediately as the kick started to work. The powerful personality of Magneto, which he gleaned from close observations of the man over many years on the Avalon station, took him over like a tidal wave. Suddenly, there was no Li Fu-jung or Mr. Xorn. There was only Magneto.

Behind him, he heard the door open. Using his magnetic powers he slammed the door shut. Esme had just barely slipped inside and squeaked in surprise. Dumfounded, she looked at the man that used to be Xorn. Magneto, still wearing Xorn's jacket and chains, turned around and faced her. "You would like to be your own person, yes?" She nodded her head. "My dear Esme, you need not be subservient to anyone ever again. None of us will." He grabbed the map of the world with his power and flipped it over, making north south and east west. "I've come back from the slaughter that would be a mutant homeland. I've come to strike back at the vengeful humans and their engines of death. All oppressors will ether change their ways or face extinction." He looked at Esme who was still staring in awe and terror. "Would you join with me so that I can set you free?"

She looked at power personified and said the only thing she could say. "Yes."

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Lines slide by tendons and slip through muscle. They drive relentlessly forward, searching for daylight.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

"Ah Sunshine! Is it going to be another beautiful day? 80 degrees and cloud free?" The master of magnitisim floated onto the makeshift balcony he had made part way up the empire state building. On the balcony was sunshine, who's power was to create a perfect day.

The manically smiling girl with curly red hair tilted her head toward Magneto. She was one of the few mutants that had kick hooked up to a mask around her face because she had become so addled with addiction and overuse of her powers that her limbs no longer moved. With rat like twitchiness she smiled through the clear plastic mask. "Of course! 80 and sunny! No cloud may darken Magneto's horizon nor will the cold chill his triumphant reign, even as fall turns to winter. The people rejoice!"

What was left of the mind of Li under the meat mask that was Magneto, stirred. "Ah yes, the people. I'd almost forgotten that all this is for them! My people!"

Madness and bloodshed was everywhere he looked. As he traveled up the west side to the building housing the third species movement, he saw running street battles between mutants and humans, and countless corpses. The movement, and its spiritual leader John Sublime survived and even prospered under Magneto's rule because they owned the secret of the drug Kick. Now they were producing the stuff like mad, paid by Magneto to satisfy the need for drugs in these battles in the mutant revolution.

Magneto dropped down to the street where he could see a cargo van being loaded with kick inhalers and pressurized tanks. He walked into a dark alley to get a better view of the scene without being observed. 'Why am I sneaking around like some rat? I am Magneto!'

'$Because$' A voice in his head replied to the rhetorical self examination, '$you are a spy$'

Leaning up against the building, Magneto scoffed. 'I'm no spy. I'm the leader of the mutant uprising!' The same voice that haunted him in his apartment, high above New York, followed him into this dirty alley. Had he not been so proud, he would have thought he was going mad with all the wanton torture he had inflicted on these humans. 'I'm not a spy.'

'$You are so twisted you don't even know that you can be someone else. That you used to be someone else. You have the deaths of millions on your hands but you still refuse to see who you are.$' Magneto shook his head. The voice seemed to be that of Xorn, the imaginary person he had pretended to be for all those months in hiding at Xavier's.

'I was waiting and plotting at Xavier's! Wasn't I? I was a plant...planted myself...infiltrated the school to subvert it to my cause! I'm sure of it.'

The voice again spoke up. '$Sounds like a spy to me.$' Magneto looked around contemplating the logic of the voice in his head, wondering why Xorn, who in his mind was a fiction created by him to get to Charles Xavier, was still haunting him. '$If you are not a spy, why are you here and why don't you just blow through the front door?$'

'I want to know what Kick is. How they make it so I don't have to be beholden to these Vial U-men.'

'$It's a junkie's drive then, to secure the source of your fix.$', the voice mocked.

'You know nothing. You are like Esme, telling me that I take too much Kick. It comes down to power! I have to be at the top of my performance if I am to change the face of the world!' Magneto raged against his own inner demons with clenched fists in the dark dank alley.

'$It would be so easy if we could just be that delivery man.$' Magneto looked at the man in the diving bell-like U-Man pressure suit. Most of the Third Species followers used these to keep their grafted mutant parts viable and it made them look like aliens. He was clearly waiting for the rest of the men to load up the truck with tanks full of kick and boxes of inhalers. Grabbing on to the iron in the U-Man's blood Magneto pulled him over to the alley, killing him instantly.

'Who says I can't be him?' Magneto smiled as he prepared to take this U-Man's place.

Later, inside the Third Species headquarters, Magneto walked through the halls wearing the pressure suit of the now dead U-Man. The U-Man had no further need for it not that magneto had stuffed his dead body into a discarded suitcase and flung it across town. The disguised master of magnitisim followed his nose and his magnetic sense to find a lab full of heavy equipment.

"HEY! What are you doing here! You don't have authorization to be here!" A man yelled behind him. He was not a U-Man but a regular scientist in a white lab coat. A human!

While Magneto's first inclination was to rip the man's heart out, for some reason he didn't. The spirit behind the soft Chinese voice inside him took over for the second that he had his guard down. Inside the U-Man suit, Li Fu-jung seized the opportunity and changed into Charles Xavier. Using Xavier's mental powers, he reached out to the scientist. 'Of course I belong here. I am fine. You are mistaken. In fact, you should tell me all that you know about the drug Kick. Tell me everything.' The personality of Magneto once again surfaced, cutting off the mental transmission, but it had done its job.

"Oh, so sorry", the scientist, with his clip-board and civilian clothes said cheerfully. Magneto turned around to face him through the portal of the U-Man suit. "I didn't recognize you. So you are interested in how Kick works eh?"

Confused but pleased, Magneto couldn't believe his luck. "Yes, please. I'm anxious to learn all about it."

"Cool, I hope you have a moment." Completely at ease, the scientist adjusted his glasses and leaned against a computer console "You know how Humans use only five percent of their brains? Well, in mutants, it's more like twenty. The extra fifteen percent is dedicated to whatever control they have for their mutant powers. Some mutants then use the rest of their brains for the actual power it's self but that's another story. This is part of the big trick with the U-Men process. We may be able to graft the parts, but wiring the brains of the recipients is a whole different deal. That's when we came up with Kick."

The emotionless voice that came through the U-Man suit asked, "What's that got to do with helping recipients control donor organs?"

The scientist smiled. "Everything. You see, we needed an intelligent agent, so we came up with Kick. Of course, we didn't call it that then. The drug would infiltrate the donor subjects brains and copy the natural wetware programs that allowed the mutant to control the organs. We would then extract the drug from the donor, treat it, and inject it into the recipient. The treatment changed the drugs behavior from read to write. The drug took over enough of the brain to use it to make allowances for the differences in the two brains and modify the wet ware to the specific recipient. This gives the recipient control over the grafted organs."

Magneto played along. "So how did you get mutie crack out of it?"

"John saw the potential in this to prove the supremacy of the third species. He came up with an entirely new program for the intelligent agent to perform. This one would amplify the muties abilities for a short time and get him addicted. In order to do this the drug has to be even more intelligent. Mutants are so unique, it must learn what drives the mutant's power and then amplify that biological component. For that it must read and borrow from the mutants higher brain functions. This had the delightful side effect of making their powers slightly unstable and making the mutants base personality slightly psychotic. These crack-addled mutants were proving our point even as they filled our coffers with gold. How sweet is that?"

Inside the U-Man suit, Magneto gritted his teeth. He had unwittingly been contributing to the disintigration of the mutant race by his use and distribution of Kick. The emotionless monitone voice the scientist heard from the suited magneto said, "Diabolical."

Turning his back on the disguised mutant leader, the scientist checked the computer console. "Yep. John's a pure out genius. Since then, there have been improvements. He's made the drug ever so slightly telepathic so newer versions have the drugs intelligence talking to each other. It coordinates with other infected minds to affect the base personality and work against the groups self interest. You add to that the even more powerful psychotic side effect and Walla! Magneto takes over New York and kills millions. Everyone except us, because we pull his strings." Behind the man, the disguised Magneto paced and wondered what he should do now. Unaware of his impending doom the scientist continued. "And if it wasn't that stooge, it would have been someone else. John was actually hoping for Xavier to be the big bad guy to come out of all this, but we'll take Maggie. He's such a butcher! As an added bonus, this little war he's brought on has made New York a hunter's paradise for Mutant organs. Our morgue is overflowing with mutant donors just ready for vivisection!"

This was the final straw for Magneto. His erily monitone voice rang out, "How nice for you. You must be so happy for your pile of innocent mutant bodies. Here, let me help you give them a proper burial."

With a thought, Magneto pulled every last bit of metal out of the structure and threw it into the east river as a huge arching streamer. Without the structural supports, the building collapsed into a pile of crumbling concrete blocks and dust. Within moments only one living being inhabited the once proud structure. Magneto's metalic bubble burst out the top of the heap of rocks and soared toward his home at the Empire State Building.

He landed lightly on the balcony and looked at his hands. They were as he had always remembered them, but what if that memory was a lie and he really was fooling himself. How had he convinced that U-Man scientist into telling all he knew? '$You are starting to see. You aren't you. You are me.$'

"No! I'm Erik Lenshir! I'm Magneto! I'll not allow you to play with my mind!" He pulled down on his telepathy proof helmet to keep the invading voice from playing its maddening games.

But the voice came from within, not without and continued. '$You are my mutant power to duplicate other Mutants I've observed over time run amok. Kick made my approximation so good that you took me over. Why do you think you could momentarily turn into Charles Xavier and alter that man's mind? I did that. You are not you. You are me.$'

Magneto began to thrash wildly with his hands over his ears. "Get away! I'm so close! The humans are being hunted down in the street. They will never enslave us again! Never slaughter us like Genosha. We are the dominant power in the world! And once I reverse the poles, unleashing unparalleled destruction, only the strong will survive. Only the mutants!"

'$The supply of kick is gone. Soon I will have enough control to take over my body for small lengths of time and I will send my message to Danielle. But we will finish what you have done. This can only end one way. The X-men will have your head.$'

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Slice!

Three lines disappear into time and space, leaving two round medallions the size of hamburger patties. The nightmare is revealed as the dream continues.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Li Fu-jung walked directly forward, taking off Xorn's mask. "And so you see, my dear Danielle, it is out of best intentions and debilitating confusion that I would be the architect of the greatest evil ever seen in this country. Countless slaughtered to counter the senseless massacre of millions in Genosha. Now that I am almost dead I can finally express with sadness that my weakness in the face of the various additions in my life hastened, and possibly made possible this evil. One evil begetting another. The drug kick, you see, has a mind of it's own that delivers madness. I believe that I was led on a quest that meant my demise from the first moment I encountered it, yet I do not blame John Sublime or the drug for the evil I've wrought. That evil was my own.

"You are probably wondering why? I'm not sure I can answer that except to say that it was inevitable. I've played the game to it's utmost and in the end, all my grand moves have been those of a pawn in a much greater game. The game is played out on a global scale with countries and races vying for the elusive entity that is power.

"But as to why I manipulated you to spare you the tragedy of the mansion and the aftermath? Tactically, it was important to remove Cessily Kincaid and Josh Foley from the scene because Cessily would be immune to magnetism and Josh could have allowed people to regroup far to quickly.

"This is far too easy a reason, though. There were others, similarly gifted that I left at Xavier's. There must be something more. Maybe it's Magneto's fondness for you and Xi'an as his pupils. I would like to think that it is my own desire that someone had to know, someone who would understand. I would hope that, in the end, I had that much control over myself. And it is my hope that you do understand. My time is short and so this message must also be short. It is important that you understand.

"To say that mutant kind is at a critical stage is cliché. It is more important to recognize that human and mutant will continue to have ebb and flow in their relationships. By Mutant's very nature, they will always be the powerful minority. It is sad to realize that most mutants, due to their uniqueness, will be either physically or socially unable to find a suitable mate and reproduce. Dr. McCoy, though brilliant, failed to factor this into his extinction equation. So mutant kind will always be parasitically dependent on humans for the creation of more mutants. But much like a child, mutant kind must demonstrate it's ability to fight back against it's parent or older sibling or be forever condemned to repeating over and over again atrocities like Genosha, and before them the mutates, and the morlock massacre and the countless little deaths blamed on individuals. Humans must understand that their naked hatred and fear of mutants must be tempered by respect for what this powerful younger kin can do. If nothing else, the madness that I unleashed upon New York can teach us this much. Humans must learn to respect mutants or they will give rise to madmen like Magneto, or myself.

"And so now, I will die. But I have delivered a final message to you, my child. Make sure people know. Make sure people understand. This is the first of countless battles between mutants and humans. Yin and yang stay constantly separate and constantly swirling. We must come to peace with our perpetual war. It is the way of the world. Only then will yin accept a piece of yang and give a bit in return.

"But most of all, I want you to remember my name. I am Li Fu-jung, not any of the countless lives I've impersonated. I am a man who lived and died and put his mark on the face of the world. Please don't let me die with no name, even if that name is associated with this great evil. Please tell people that I lived."

Wolverine walked right up behind the speaking Li Fu-Jung and in one savage swipe he cut his head clean off his shoulders.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Dani bolted upright in bed making her two long braids swing out in front of her before coming to rest on her chest. Beads of sweat collected on her brow. She recalled what her dream so vividly told in her and the warning it delivered. 'This was no ordinary dream. Someone was speaking to me. My god, could that really be what's happening in New York right now? It was all so real! So Horrible!' The clock read 3:10. She hadn't been asleep that long but the dream felt like it had taken days.

Still shaking, she got up and looked in on the kids. The boys room contained everyone it should, as did the girls room. On a lark she peeked into Ed's room, only to find it still empty. 'I hope he's ok. Tomorrow I'm going to want to pick that brain of his for the plausibility of this story.' She closed the door and walked back to her room. 'Oh who am I kidding? He's probably found some honey out there to bounce him back from being drop kicked by Xi'an. I swear, men can be so juvenile sometimes.'

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Ed wiped the last of the burger from his face and wordlessly ordered another pint and the check. "So, I understand that your girl, she seems like a good kid."

"Yep"

"Well, I'm, I'm sure it's not the same, but these teens... kids, really... I've really grown attached to them. And I never was terribly good with kids, so how..."

"How do you deal with them? How do you handle it when they are up at all hours? How do you watch them sprain wrists and pull hamstrings and not get up and murder the coach who tells them to tough it out?"

"Yea, what are you supposed to do?" Ed looked at him for answers to the questions he hadn't quite formulated.

"Well, I don't know. My father, well he was a simple man. Could work wonders with wood, but that was about it, so no example for me there. For a lot of it, you look to God for patience, you're wife for support and when all else fails I got a good piece of advice from this guy. Have you ever heard of Dr. Spock?"

"The guy with the ears?"

"Nah, the real Doctor. Wrote a book a while back. I was concerned when May was born that I would ruin her so I picked it up and read it like the bible. You know what he said?"

"No, what?"

"He said: Kids. You protect them with everything you got from REAL harm, right? You put a roof over their heads and clothes on their backs. Then for the rest of it, you just love 'em." He finished up his beer. "I don't know, but that seems to work and It's kinda a two way street. Maybe it's already working for you and you just don't know it yet."

A sudden whoosh came from the front door as two police officers came in with a small man with a mop of brown hair. One the officers said, "Hey Bill, I picked up something you lost." The other officer laughed.

The large Bartender leaned over the bar and addressed the group. "Thanks Tony. So Luthor, what is it this time? Miss the bus?" The officers scoffed at the dig.

The small wiry man became animated in his guilt. "Man, I'm really sorry, I just sat down for a second and next thing I know, I have Officer-Friendly Yohansan here knocking on the door and offering me a ride."

"Well I hope you don't mind that I called them to give you a hand up. I really need your help closing up tonight." He turned to the man who was hurriedly running into the back shucking his coat. "Not to mention the fact that I already warned you about being late and I really don't want to have to fire you!" He walked around the bar mumbling. "Kid's got rocks in his head about being on time or something I swear."

Ted watched the bartender go up to the two officers and take their orders. He swiveled his head around and looked at Ed. "It just dawned on me. You are one of Dani's people aren't you?"

Ed smirked. "I like to think of myself as my own man, but I guess you could say that. What gave it away?"

Ted tapped his temple. "Sunglasses."

"Less obvious that the alternative, I assure you. Is that a problem?"

"Nope. I take it you all were keeping an eye out for my girl and I appreciate it. You be careful with those kids though. They grow on you. Need a lift home?" He started to get up from his stool.

Ed's first impression was to say no and walk home, but then he realized that he's a part of this team now. "Sure, thanks."

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

Ring! The phone at the Krandal household cuts into the darkness of early morning. Olive Krandal, having snuck in only moments earlier, worried that someone had seen her and was now telling her mother. She could hear her mother say, "This had better be good, it's three in the #$#ing morning!" Half stricken with fear that her mother would beat her again if she had broken her curfew, she silently lifted the handle on the phone and listened in.

The warbling and strange voice on the other end said, "Shut up and listen you fat obnoxious cow! This is more important than your beauty sleep. You're daughter has been cheated out of victories for years now. Her reputation has suffered and she will be looked over for scholarships because of it."

"Who is this and what do you want?"

"You can call me The Raven. I have a message. May Armstrong is a mutant. She has been using her gravity defying power to cheat at gymnastics since she was thirteen"

Olive gasped loud then hung up the phone. She listened to her mother scream "Hello?! Are you there?" The plastic sound of a phone hitting the receiver rang out and Olive continued to listen as her mother laughed a wicked laugh.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

To be continued ...


	12. Revalations

Chapter 12 - Revelations

May walked home the last block after being let out of Ms. Moonstar's van. It was cold and the fatigue of the nights activity weighed on her, but she didn't want her parents waking. After all, now that she was a mutant she was un-bustable. 

Mutant. The word was much more real to her now. It had been an abstract thing, a nuisance, someone else's problem until this evening. She realized that things were going to be different from now on and that not all those differences were very nice. On the other hand, the new kids she met seemed Ok. They weren't that different from her friends at school, or at least, how her friends used to be. At the party, she noticed that they treated her differently. Some spoke in hushed tones while others who had never shown an interest in her before, like Ben, suddenly wanted to chat. She hadn't really felt different before, but after tonight she was finally aware of how much things had already changed.

The lights were out at her house. Down the street, the gray van which carried her new found mutant friends was gone. She stood still and let the power show her the landscape of the side yard leading up to her bedroom window. Through her sense of mass, she noticed how fresh snow looked. The snow muted everything it was on, but did not obscure its properties. Her white eyes surveyed this world and looked for ways to get to the window without leaving tracks for her parents to find. Her experience with the tree earlier had shown her that she needed to think before she reached out with the more aggressive uses of her power. 

The Snow gave her an idea. She had been discounting the gravitational force of air, which, like unpacked snow, put a small gravitational haze around everything. She could try to make the gravitational force between her and the air above strong enough that, when she made herself unatracted to anything else, she would fall into it. She heard the familiar sound of the wind chimes that accompanied her power as she affected the air above her. With her senses fully attuned to gravitational forces, she finally realized what the sound was. It wasn't really a sound at all but the ripples in space-time that her powers made when they disrupted natural gravity. The sound made her happy but she hoped that it wasn't loud enough to attract attention. 

A smile crossed her face as she became free from the pull of the earth. The tiny tug of the airspace above her was just enough to get her moving. Once off the ground, she concentrated on a different block of air and started to pull herself forward. Carefully and slowly, the mutant girl kept pulling herself over the landscape through successive areas in the air in front of her like going hand over hand up a rope. 

She soon found herself at the window. Though it had seemed like fifteen minutes to her, she guessed that it had only taken a minute for her to cross the lawn to her bedroom. In those fifteen minutes, she had contemplated the problem of the closed window. If her feet weren't on the ground, how could she pull up the sash and let herself in? She used her well honed technique for undoing the latch from the outside on the unlocked but still secured window. Pointing at the window for a point of reference, her power reached out and very gently forced the bottom of the sash to gravitationally repel the earth rather than attract it. This worked. The window silently moved in its track and let the floating girl slide into her bedroom. 

Feeling like she had just landed one of her gymnastic routines, she touched down on the floor with her normal mass. Smiling to herself at the performance, she quickly hopped into her bed. Still half way clothed, she drifted off into care free sleep.  
O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

"You wanted to see me sir?" Sergeant Jean was at the door to Kendal Marks' motel room as Marks sat in the reading chair looking at the TV. Though it was nearing three thirty, Marks was awake and drinking coffee. It was clear that Sergeant Jean was not yet as awake, though his years of military training kept him from being sloppy. 

Marks pointed to the TV. "I thought you would want to see this. It's on all the channels. Breaking news from New York City." He shook the remote at the screen. Sketchy video filmed with the aid of a flashlight showed a war zone. There was very little that looked like Manhattan in these pictures except every now and then you could spot a landmark. "That crazy bastard did it. He finally opened up hostilities in his war against humanity! It was a slaughter. Unimaginable." He shook his head. Suddenly the older man banged his fist on the table and his face went red. "I've got to get there. We've got to mobilize! Fight! How dare they!"

The Sergeant rubbed his eyes with his hand to help him focus. His fingertips lingered on the scars that disappeared under his hairline. "I'd advise against that, Kendal. And when you think it over you will too." His hands returned to their customary place at his sides. "There, you will be a single voice in the masses who will be screaming out for mutant blood. Here, you are already the leader of a more moderate faction with the foresight to see this tragedy coming. This madman has proven your point. Mutants aren't like us. Not really."

Marks slumped back in the solitary reading chair the low rent motel room offered. He looked at the younger man and said, "You are right, but my heart..." He motioned to his chest. "My heart says I should go and see what I can do there. I'm a strong man but I believe that god is testing us. He wants to see if we can choose the right path in the face of unspeakable evil. I swear Bryant, sometimes, in a moment of weakness I doubt that what we are doing here will help anybody."

"Mr. Marks, I speak for all of us when I tell you that we believe in what you are doing. There isn't a doubt in the mind of anyone on my staff, or anyone I've met since being involved in your organization that this path righteous."

"You know, it may surprise you but I personally feel bad for these mutants, these poor afflicted souls. I mean, you look at them and they may seem normal. You talk to them and they respond as you would expect, but they are an abomination. Every last one of them, damned to hell. Does that mean that we all are to be damned with them? Or make this country a hell on earth? Like New York? I have pity on them but that doesn't mean that I am blind to the danger they represent." He sighed again and relaxed. "I wonder if the power of my righteous campaign has made me proud and corrupted my objectivity. Truthfully, I'd like to grow Purity and as a leader in that organization, become a powerful and influential man. Is it wrong to aspire to be a leader of men? I may think not. But look at the other side. Look at the mutants leaders! Do I have the moral fiber, the raw courage to face someone who can kill me with a thought? I'm not even talking about a base villain like Magneto, but a Scott Summers or a Dr. McCoy? In the face of this nightmare I must admit that they scare me as much as someone holding a loaded gun." He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. "God is surely testing me." 

"Maybe we are all being tested. Tomorrows rally is liable to draw a crowd Mr. Marks. Our security was already at its highest level so I've no doubt we are prepared. Still I'd like to rest my men. Maybe you should think about sleeping as well?"

"I'll be fine Sergeant. I'm sorry to have bothered you this early. It was very selfish of me to wake you just to have you hear me rant about how the world is unjust. But ever since Donna from the New Jersey office called, I've been haunted by these poor suffering people." He smiled as he took up the pen and pad from the small table. "Perhaps these thoughts are best shared as a speech. Thank you for your time Sergeant. I'll see you in the morning."

"No trouble at all Sir, I'm glad to help." Bryant Jean smiled to himself as he returned to his room to sleep a few more hours.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

In a corner of a rented room, in a shell of black polymers and brushed stainless steel, a humanoid robot sat hugging its knees against its chest. Though it was now mimicking sleep, an action it had adopted to put the humans around it at ease, it never slept. Disguised antennas picked up radio and TV transmissions and scanned them for anything that may be of use later. As her handlers slept it kept recording. The airwaves were busy tonight.

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

The garage door was illuminated by two circles of light as the light blue pickup truck pulled into the driveway. Ted Armstrong hopped out of the cab. It had started snowing again since he dropped off the strange mutant lawyer. He always thought of himself as a good judge of character. While that guy was cocky and full of himself, he genuinely meant well and stood by what he said. Lots of hot air, but no BS. Not a bad guy to have looking after your kid, especially after some of the stories he'd told about these mutant people having trouble getting by. 'People are disowning their kids? Unbelievable!'

He shut the door and stomped inside, knocking snow off his boots. In the last two years when this kind of thing had happened, he usually tried to be quiet so his daughter May didn't think he was "invading her privacy". Tonight, the game was over. 

He made his way to the end of the hallway and lightly tapped on the door. "Honey? Are you awake?" He said in a soft voice. Not waiting for much of an answer he opened the door. "May? You awake bunny?"

From under her covers May stirred. "I am now." She said her unhappiness at only a half hour of peaceful slumber evident.

He sat on the edge of the bed, picking up a stuffed dog. He toyed with the dog in his hands. "I'm worried about you sweetheart. More than I've ever been worried about anything in my life."

Something in his tone made May stir. "Daddy?"

He stared at the dog. "You know, your little midnight runs always made me a little concerned, but that was nothing I didn't do myself when I was your age. I kinda knew the terrain." He looked into the eyes of the stuffed puppy. "But this, ... condition. You being different, it scares the hell out of me. I always thought I could protect you, but I don't know what I can do anymore sweetheart. The challenges you face, they make me feel so weak. I don't even know where they are going to come from. All I have is fear."

She sat up and hugged her father's slumped over back, still wearing the sweatshirt she'd gone to the party in. "Oh god, Dad."

"One day you will understand, May. When it's your kid that's in trouble, you'll do anything." She held him tighter. "When you were born, you were the cutest thing. A tiny little bald headed baby. You had a little patch of blonde fuzz at the base of your spine that your mother called your 'bunny tail' so we started to call you Bunny, did you know that? You weren't May until you were two. We realized, as you started to talk, we couldn't call you Bunny forever. People, other kids, would tease you. So we gave you a choice between Lucy, Lucinda, Cindy and May and you liked May, so there you were."

Ted continued to talk to the dog as May hugged him from behind. "You know, you stole my heart that first day. I looked at your little face that even then looked so much like your mothers, I knew I'd do anything. Jump into a lion's cage, take a bullet, work 80 hours in the furniture factory, even stay up all night just to see that you are safe. It's just not good enough anymore, sweetheart." He turned around. "I need help here. I need your help." He held her arms near the shoulders gently and looked her in the eye. "I want you to promise me that you will let me know what you are doing, no matter how much you will think I will disapprove. I might be angry about it later, but don't make me worry that I don't know where you are or if you are safe."

She looked at the celing. "Dad, I mean, Jeez!"

"No butts, now." Ted was firm in his demand. "Have I ever come down on you for going and messing around with your friends? No. I know you are a good girl, but that's not the point. You are special now. You need protection. Did you know that there were six kids, mutant kids that came with Xi'an and Dani that knowingly put themselves at risk tonight?" 

"Really? At risk?" She shook her head.

"Yes. They found out you were going out and followed to make sure you were going to be Ok. Their chaperone also trailed you to make sure you were ok. Stood like a damned fool in the woods to keep an eye out. It was just by chance that he ran into me later waiting for police reports at Bill's. You can't go off half cocked like that anymore May. It's dangerous. If I don't know where you are, I can't protect you from the bad guys sweetie. Promise me." He pulled her close and hugged her.

May felt the warm loving embrace of her concerned father and said, "Ok daddy, no more. I promise."

"I just want you to be safe, bunny. I always have."

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

The moon shone down, cold and clear night in the deep forest of Oregon's back country. Among the pine trees, thick with snow, something stirred. From the ground and the trees, smoky energy danced in the moonlight and started to coalesce into the shape of two people. There was a man with long hair, robes and a walking stick with moonbeams representing gems at the top. The other figure was a lovely young woman with flowers in her hair. She wore a wispy flowing blouse and blue jeans and the outline of her bare feet hovered just above the snow.

"The night is beautiful, Merlin, but you seem troubled. What is it that you see?" The ethereal voice of the woman did not travel through the air but instead spoke through the soul of the forest. Had there been anyone to hear, it would have sounded as if the wind had passed through the trees.

The man's response is equally haunting. "I hear disturbing things from far away. Another forest cries out in fear that all is not well and war will come to its lands."

She turned and walked above the fragile snow on her gossamer feet. "We've heard your warnings before. Foolish are we that we do not ever heed them. Perhaps this time we may save ourselves the coming of this doom? So tell me, the others, did they survive the unveiling of your prophetic voice that night seven summers past?"

The man walked over, his flowing robes making only soft patterns in the untouched snow. "Pasha, you know the answer. The elders didn't listen and my warnings came too late." He put a smoky gray hand on her shoulder.

She turned, the moonlight catching the tears in her eyes. "But Electro Soul? Mishka? Randy? All the others? Did none of them survive that night?"

He pointing to two partially covered skeletons, obscured by snow and plant life. One held a jewel encrusted walking stick while the other had long black flowing hair, blue jeans and bare feet. "No one survived that night, not even us. And if no one can hear us calling through the trees it will happen again."

O0o0O0o.o0O0o0O

To be continued in Gravity Well Part 2.

Author's Note

Well, this is the final installment of Gravity Well Part 1. 

I've chosen to end this story and immediately start a follow on because I intend to change my writing style. You, the readers, have asked for more frequent updates and clearer storylines, so that is where I will go in Gravity Well Part 2.

I want to thank everyone for reading my stuff. For your patience in sticking with me I'm doing everything I can to write more engaging and entertaining stories. My hope is that you hang on for a little while longer while I wrap up this story, now in its second year.

Peace

Patrick Lewis

PS: This one is dedicated to my Dad. Happy birthday. 


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